Abstract
Acquiescence, the tendency to agree regardless of the content of an item, is a commonly observed response style that may distort respondent scores. In the current study, we: (a) revised basic concepts of methods for measuring and controlling acquiescence, (b) describe some important properties of balanced scales, (c) examine if methods of controlling acquiescence provide ipsative scales, (d) explain the mechanism underlying the correction of acquiescence, and (e) compare the centering and standardizing correction methods. By using simulated data, we demonstrate that balanced scales are automatically controlled for acquiescence and that the scoring process does not yield ipsative scales. By contrast, the standardizing method of correction in fact undo the correction that takes place when using the centering method.
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Notes
- 1.
R code is available here: http://www.labape.com.br/acqu_mirt/methods_of_recoding.html see also: https://github.com/rprimi/acqu_mirt
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Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the support of the Ayrton Senna Foundation. The first, second, and third authors also received a scholarship from the National Council on Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, 310909/2017-1), Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES, 88881.337381/2019-01) and São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP, 2018/10933-8).
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Primi, R., Hauck-Filho, N., Valentini, F., Santos, D. (2020). Classical Perspectives of Controlling Acquiescence with Balanced Scales. In: Wiberg, M., Molenaar, D., González, J., Böckenholt, U., Kim, JS. (eds) Quantitative Psychology. IMPS 2019. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, vol 322. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43469-4_25
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