Controlling Acquiescent Response Style Through Negated Versus Polar Opposite Items: Design Considerations for Balancing Measurement Scales

Abstract Acquiescent response style (ARS) is the tendency to agree with measurement items regardless of their content. ARS tends to differ across cultures, making it particularly relevant for cross-cultural research, as it may disrupt cross-cultural comparability. Balanced measurement scales include items written in different directions of the measured construct and are hypothesized to be a remedy for undesirable effects of ARS. This study examined the effect on measurement properties of three scale balancing approaches in a cross-cultural research setting: (i) unbalanced scales; (ii) scale balancing with negated items where some of the items were written with a negation, such as “no” or “not”; and (iii) scale balancing that introduce items written with polar opposite terms (e.g. “unhappy” as the opposite of “satisfied”) that reversed the item direction without using negations. This study examined these approaches on four well-being measurement scales, originally unbalanced, that used an Agree-Disagree Likert response scale. Participants were recruited to a Web survey from three groups: U.S. non-Hispanic whites (n = 1,200, interviewed in English), U.S. Hispanics (n = 1,200, interviewed in English), and Mexicans (n = 1,200, interviewed in Spanish). Respondents were randomly assigned to one scale-balancing conditions for well-being measures. Balanced scales outperformed unbalanced scales for convergent validity, with higher correlations observed between scale scores and validation measures. Between negated and polar opposite balancing, no statistical differences were observed in factorial model fit, reliability, or convergent validity. This study supports that, when designed carefully, balanced measurement scales may be effective for addressing ARS and improving measurement properties over unbalanced scales.