Question

Judy writes a survey to assess how much people worry. Her survey has 20 questions that people can rate their level of agreement to on a seven-point Likert scale. All of the questions are worded so that higher responses will indicate a higher level of worry. After having 100 people complete her survey, she finds that a lot of respondents often respond to all of the questions by choosing only the "strongly agree" option. How could she improve the construct validity of her survey?

a. She could change the number of response options.
b. She could include reverse-worded items.
c. She could encourage people to be as honest as possible while filling out the survey.
d. She could use the worry questionnaire on a group of people with anxiety disorders.

Answer 1

b. She could include reverse-worded items.

Step-by-step explanation:

Reverse word are often used to reduce or eliminate bias, it's done by reversing the score that the numerical scale runs in the opposite direction. For example in this case of 7 point likert scale, he will just switch the coding such that strongly agree takes a the 7 code.