The Influence of Item Wording on Questionnaire Scale Scores

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.