This study used a novel research approach to investigate the effects of unlabeled response scales on response distributions. Instead of responding to standard questionnaire items respondents were asked to report given judgments on either semantic-differential (SD) or agree-disagree (AD) response scales, thereby showing the extent to which respondents agree upon where to place given judgments. Results from a survey-based study (N = 418) show that respondents to a large extent disagree about where to place judgments on the response scale; the level of agreement for different judgment intensities ranged from 42% to 82% and the level of agreement is lower for AD than SD response scales. The low levels of agreement contribute to non-substantive variance in the data which increases the risk of attenuated or inflated correlations between constructs. Moreover, simulations of actual response distributions suggest that unlabeled response scales may lead to a strong bias in the form of underestimated shares of positive answers. Implications for research and marketing research practice of using unlabeled response scales are discussed and it is recommended that response categories on SD and AD items always should be labeled since this will reduce non-substantive variance and bias in the data.

这项研究使用一种新颖的研究方法来调查未标记的反应量表对反应分布的影响。而不是回答标准调查表项目，而是要求受访者以语义-差异（SD）或同意-不同意（AD）回应量表报告给定的判断，从而显示受访者在多大程度上同意将给出的判断放在何处。基于调查的研究结果（N= 418）表明，受访者在很大程度上不同意将评判标准放在何处；不同判断强度的一致性水平在42％至82％之间，而AD的一致性水平低于SD响应量表。较低的一致性导致数据中的非实质性差异，从而增加了构造之间相关性减弱或膨胀的风险。而且，对实际回答分布的模拟表明，未标记的回答范围可能会以肯定答案的份额被低估的形式导致强烈的偏见。