Factors Defined by Negatively Keyed Items: The Result of Careless Respondents?

摘要

A frequently occurring phenomenon in factor andcluster analysis of personality or attitude scale items isthat all or nearly all questionnaire items that are negativelykeyed will define a single factor. Although substantiveinterpretations of these negative factors areusually attempted, this study demonstrates that thenegative factor could be produced by a relatively smallportion of the respondents who fail to attend to thenegative-positive wording of the items. Data weregenerated using three different correlation matrices,which demonstrated that regardless of data source,when only 10% of the respondents are careless in thisfashion, a clearly definable negative factor is generated.Recommendations for instrument developmentand data editing are presented.