Information equivalence of two forms of the scale of identification with a social group

The most used scale in Russia for measuring social identification includes the general question formulation "Please indicate for each group how often you feel a sense of closeness..." followed by a list of social groups for which the respondent must assess their closeness, using the gradations "often," "sometimes," "almost never," and "difficult to say". There is a possibility of increasing the number of gradations of this scale. Its two forms — the traditional categorical and the rating — can be empirically compared, firstly, in terms of how reducible the rating scale is to the categorical one, and secondly, in terms of the strength of statistical relationships formed with control variables when using both forms of the scale. Both forms of the scale were applied in a study of the social identity of Russian consumers conducted by the "Expert Sociology" company. The items from the materialism scale developed by M. Richins and S. Dawson in its modified adaptation in Russian by V. A. Khashchenko were taken as control variables. The analysis showed that in the traditional categorical form of the social identification scale, the gradation "difficult to say" does not maintain a consistent relationship with other response options. Transforming the scale into a kind of a Likert scale by converting categories into scores allows for the discovery of statistical relationships where the traditional form shows their absence. Therefore, in terms of information content, the rating scale may surpass the traditional one. However, the traditional form of the scale is more suitable for supporting managerial decisions.