ReviewPsicologia, reflexao e critica : revista semestral do Departamento de Psicologia da UFRGS2017
Scale development: ten main limitations and recommendations to improve future research practices.
Review in Psicologia, reflexao e critica : revista semestral do Departamento de Psicologia da UFRGS, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 196 papers, 8 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
196 citing papers in PubMed, 8 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 721 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing basic/fundamental psychological need fulfillment: systematic mapping and review of existing scales to foster cumulative science.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Pooled it
- Measurement of compassion fatigue in animal health care professionals: a systematic review of available instruments and their content validity.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2024Pooled it
- Body Image Assessment Tools in Pregnant Women: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Brief Sensations Seeking Scale (BSSS): Validity Evidence in Mexican Adolescents.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of the Development and Psychometric Properties of Loneliness Measures for Children and Adolescents.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Pooled it
- Hand-washing promotion for preventing diarrhoea.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2021Pooled it
- Systematic review of instruments for assessing culinary skills in adults: What is the quality of their psychometric properties?PloS one · 2021Pooled it
- Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of the parental rules toward adolescent drinking questionnaire: Two factors are better than the original one.Addictive behaviors · 2021Trial
- Quality Assessment of Physician Discharge Summaries: Instrument Development and Reliability Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Selecting Between Whole-Sample and Split-Sample Strategies for Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses: Guidance for Psychometric Scale Development.Applied psychological measurement · 2026Article
- A new screening tool for determining occupational therapy needs in hospitalized children with cancer: a validity and reliability study.European journal of pediatrics · 2026Article
- Mental Health and Health-Related Behavioral Patterns Surrounding a Major International Sporting Event: An Observational Study.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The Scale for AI Literacy in Health Care Workers: Development and Validation.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- The Pain in Dystonia Scale (PIDS)-Validation in Craniofacial and Upper Limb Dystonia.Movement disorders clinical practice · 2026Article
- Chasing Happily Ever After: Psychometric Development and Nomological Validation of the Rescue Fantasy Beliefs Scale.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Development and Validation of AI Help-Seeking Behavior Scale Among Undergraduate University Students.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2026Article
- Adaptation of the Barcelona Bipolar Eating Disorder Scale to Turkish and investigation of its validity and reliability.Journal of eating disorders · 2026Article
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136 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The scale development process is critical to building knowledge in human and social sciences. The present paper aimed (a) to provide a systematic review of the published literature regarding current practices of the scale development process, (b) to assess the main limitations reported by the authors in these processes, and (c) to provide a set of recommendations for best practices in future scale development research. Papers were selected in September 2015, with the search terms "scale development" and "limitations" from three databases: Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science, with no time restriction. We evaluated 105 studies published between 1976 and 2015. The analysis considered the three basic steps in scale development: item generation, theoretical analysis, and psychometric analysis. The study identified ten main types of limitation in these practices reported in the literature: sample characteristic limitations, methodological limitations, psychometric limitations, qualitative research limitations, missing data, social desirability bias, item limitations, brevity of the scale, difficulty controlling all variables, and lack of manual instructions. Considering these results, various studies analyzed in this review clearly identified methodological weaknesses in the scale development process (e.g., smaller sample sizes in psychometric analysis), but only a few researchers recognized and recorded these limitations. We hope that a systematic knowledge of the difficulties usually reported in scale development will help future researchers to recognize their own limitations and especially to make the most appropriate choices among different conceptions and methodological strategies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.