Date of Award

Fall 2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Program/Concentration

Psychology

Committee Director

Terry L. Dickinson

Committee Member

Thomas F. Cash

Committee Member

Glynn D. Coates

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.P65 B45 2003

Abstract

Psychological researchers need methods for obtaining accurate responses from participants when using questionnaire data. The current study looked at the influence of negatively worded scale items on the overall scale. The NEO-PI (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and four versions of that scale were used to test the impact of negatively worded items. The NEO-PI and each of its versions contained differing amounts of negatively worded items. More than 1,100 participants were used in this study, with approximately 230 people responding to each version of the NEO-PI. Confirmatory factor analysis and associated chi-square tests and goodness-of-fit measures were used to evaluate eight hypotheses pertaining to measurement invariance. Results show that negative wording affects the measurement properties of scales. While it was found that negative wording does not alter the factor structure of the NEO-PI, attention is drawn to the fact that negatively wording affects the mean scores. Implications, limitations and ideas for future research are addressed.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/21ze-ed55

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