School of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Multivariate Behav Res. 2024 May-Jun;59(3):434-460. doi: 10.1080/00273171.2023.2235682. Epub 2023 Aug 31.
The graded forced-choice (FC) format has recently emerged as an alternative that may preserve the advantages and overcome the issues of the dichotomous FC measures. The current study presented the first large-scale evaluation of the performance of three types of FC measures (FC2, FC4 and FC5 with 2, 4 and 5 response options, respectively) and compared their performance to their Likert (LK) counterparts (LK2, LK4, and LK5) on (1) psychometric properties, (2) respondent reactions, and (3) susceptibility to response styles. Results showed that, compared to LK measures with the same number of response options, the three FC scales provided better support for the hypothesized factor structure, were perceived as more faking-resistant and cognitive demanding, and were less susceptible to response styles. FC4/5 and LK4/5 demonstrated similarly good reliability, while LK2 provided more reliable scores than FC2. When compared across the three FC measures, FC4 and FC5 displayed comparable psychometric performance and respondent reactions. FC4 exhibited a moderate presence of extreme response style, while FC5 had a weak presence of both extreme and middle response styles. Based on these findings, the study recommends the use of graded FC over dichotomous FC and LK, particularly FC5 when extreme response style is a concern.
分级迫选（FC）格式最近作为一种替代方法出现，它可能保留了二分 FC 度量的优势并克服了其存在的问题。本研究首次大规模评估了三种 FC 度量（FC2、FC4 和 FC5，分别有 2、4 和 5 个响应选项）的性能，并将其与对应的李克特（LK）度量（LK2、LK4 和 LK5）进行了比较（1）心理测量特性，（2）受访者反应，以及（3）对反应风格的敏感性。结果表明，与具有相同响应选项数的 LK 度量相比，这三个 FC 量表为假设的因子结构提供了更好的支持，被认为更能抵抗伪造，认知要求更高，并且对反应风格的敏感性更低。FC4/5 和 LK4/5 表现出相似的可靠性，而 LK2 提供的分数比 FC2 更可靠。在这三个 FC 量表之间进行比较时，FC4 和 FC5 表现出相似的心理测量性能和受访者反应。FC4 表现出中等程度的极端反应风格，而 FC5 则表现出较弱的极端和中间反应风格。基于这些发现，本研究建议使用分级 FC 代替二分 FC 和 LK，特别是在存在极端反应风格的情况下建议使用 FC5。
