AN EMPIRICAL VALIDATION OF BIPOLAR RISK PERCEPTION SCALING METHODS

Bipolar rating scales (e.g., semantic differentials) are a common tool for gathering perceptions about attributes of persons, events, or act ivities. Researchers have questioned, however, whether individual resp onses are methodologically constrained when bipolar scales are used. C omparing both bipolar and unipolar scales, the present study investiga tes previous research findings on perceptions of risk by Fischhoff, Sl ovic, Lichtenstein, Read, and Combs (1978). The subjects in the curren t study (N = 94) rated the same 30 technologies, substances, and activ ities as in the Fischhoff et al. ( 1978) study but used unipolar scale s. Correlational analysis indicated that some presumed antagonistic ad jective pairs were indeed opposites, while others were not. On the oth er hand, factor analyses indicated that the same factors described by Fischhoff et al. (1978) were uncovered in the present study. However, the use of a unipolar methodology allowed us to refine the interpretat ions of both factors.