Affective Instruments: What is Important and What do They Look Like?

In this chapter, described are the qualities of a good self-report instrument or questionnaire ¹ that has been designed for the purpose of assessing one or more affective characteristics. Five qualities must be present at satisfactory levels if a self-report instrument is to provide accurate, precise, and usable information. They are: communication value, objectivity, validity, reliability, and interpretability. Although it is possible for all of the items included on an instrument to be associated with a single affect-target combination (e.g., attitude toward school) and thus have only one affective scale (see our discussion in chap. 3, this volume), the tendency is for most instruments to consist of multiple sets of items, each pertaining a single affect-target combination, and thus include multiple scales.