A Cross-National Comparison of Extreme Response Style Measures

Abstract

Five measures of extreme response style were compared across 6,146 study participants from 36 countries: the traditional measure, a modified traditional measure, the individual standard deviation, an index of dispersion and an index of entropy. The traditional measure of extreme response style, whereby the two extreme categories of an item or rating scale are assigned a value of ‘1’, all interior categories are assigned a value of ‘0’ and the sum of the ‘1’ values reflects the extent of extreme responding behaviour, performed slightly better than the other extreme response style measures examined with respect to reliability and ability to discriminate. The traditional measure of extreme response style was positively related to the variance of an attitudinal variable but unrelated to its mean. It was also related to Hofstede's cultural orientation variables of individualism-collectivism and power distance. Future cross-cultural and cross-national empirical research should systematically incorporate measures of extreme responding so that more is learned about the phenomenon and its possible effects.