University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China.
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
Assessment. 2021 Jun;28(4):1110-1124. doi: 10.1177/10731911211001931. Epub 2021 Mar 29.
The current research challenges the received view that misresponses to reversed items are the result of participants' irrational behavior. On the contrary, for participants at a midpoint level of a trait, it is perfectly logical to agree and disagree with seemingly equivalent statements (e.g., I'm not tall, but neither am I short). For this reason, regular and reversed items for a unidimensional construct were predicted to load on separate factors. Two types of reversed items-polar opposites and negated regular items-were also predicted to load on separate factors, as they are qualitatively different. An empirical study supported this explanation. Differential responding was found to be highest for participants at the mid-level of a trait and diminished toward the ends, revealing a quadratic relationship and a trait × method interaction. Thus, our findings demonstrate that the logical response pattern of individuals at the mid-level of a trait is another previously unrecognized explanation for why the inclusion of regular and reverse-keyed items can contribute to the apparent bi-dimensionality of unidimensional constructs (for data analysis results, see https://osf.io/krh2w/).
当前的研究挑战了这样一种既定观点，即对反向项目的错误反应是参与者非理性行为的结果。相反，对于处于特质中间水平的参与者来说，同意和不同意看似等效的陈述（例如，我不高，但也不矮）是完全合乎逻辑的。出于这个原因，预测单项结构的常规和反向项目将分别加载到不同的因素上。还预测两种类型的反向项目——极性对立和否定的常规项目——将分别加载到不同的因素上，因为它们在性质上有所不同。一项实证研究支持了这一解释。研究发现，特质处于中间水平的参与者的反应差异最大，而向两端逐渐减少，揭示了二次关系和特质×方法的相互作用。因此，我们的研究结果表明，特质中间水平个体的逻辑反应模式是另一种以前未被认识到的解释，即包含常规和反向键项目为何有助于单项结构的明显二维性（有关数据分析结果，请参见 https://osf.io/krh2w/）。
