J. Jackson Barnette

Effects of Stem and Likert Response Option Reversals on Survey Internal Consistency: If You Feel the Need, There is a Better Alternative to Using those Negatively Worded Stems:

The controversy with regard to using reverse or negatively worded survey stems has been around for several decades; it is a practice of questionable utility intended to guard against acquiescence or response set behaviors. A 2 × 3 design in which item stem direction and item response pattern direction were crossed was used to determine effects on internal consistency reliability as measured by Cronbach’s alpha. The condition having the highest alpha was when all directly worded stems were used with bidirectional response options. Alpha was higher and accounted for at least 10%, and in one case 20%, higher internal consistency as compared with any of the three conditions in which negatively worded stems were used. This would indicate that the use of all directly worded stems and half of the response options going in one direction and half going in the other direction may be a better way of guarding against acquiescence and response set behaviors than the use of items with negatively worded stems.

NONATTENDING RESPONDENT EFFECTS ON INTERNAL CONSISTENCY OF SELF-ADMINISTERED SURVEYS: A MONTE CARLO SIMULATION STUDY

This research investigated the effects of types and prevalence of response patterns that might be provided by nonattending respondents on Cronbach’s alpha. Three simulated data sets, one for each value of Cronbach’s alpha .700, .800, and .900, were constructed for 100 respondents on 50 one-to-seven Likert items. Participants were replaced randomly in each population by one of eight response patterns at 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% replacement levels. Effects were greater as a function of increased prevalence in the respondent group; however, as few as 5% of certain types of nonattending patterns had strong, inflating effects on alpha.