Judgment time for forced-choice adjective pairs

Abstract

In constructing forced-choice items for paper and pencil personality inventories, is it better to ask for the least or most descriptive phrase for negative items? 2 sets of 20 forced-choice pairs were tried on 2 groups of 32 college students. One group was asked to give the least descriptive response, the other the most descriptive. "The reputed resistance to unfavorable alternatives does not appear… . In a limited sense, it would be preferable to use one (either most or least) rather than two types of response, given variance in PI discrepancy. The adequate solution is to have no such variance." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)