Publisher's Synopsis
The book is the seventh volume of the Marketing Scales Handbook series, the oldest and most comprehensive set of books that describe and review multi-item scales (survey questions) that have been used by scholars in the study of consumer behavior. The wide variety of scales in Volume 7 are for use in surveys and experiments when studying issues relevant to understanding consumers or similar groups of people such as viewers, shoppers, patients, or citizens. To be included in the volume, the scales had to be composed of at least three items and have empirical evidence of their psychometric quality. Using those general guidelines, hundreds of articles published in the top marketing journals during a two-year period (2010-2011) were examined. Ultimately, 364 scales were identified as meeting the stated criteria and were reviewed for the volume. Each review provides the scale items as well as information regarding the measure's origin, previous users, and measurement quality.Because the studies using these scales have been published in top academic journals, it is possible to judge their quality. The hope is that researchers will consider it better to build on the work of experts and adopt their measures rather than spending time themselves developing scales from scratch, or worse, using simplistic survey questions of dubious quality. The precision and reliability of these scales increases the accuracy of measurement and, thereby, should improve the quality of decisions based upon their results.
