The Quest scale’s uni-directional items may inflate scores through acquiescence bias

Evidence

Batson (1976) developed a six-item scale, the “Interaction” or “Quest” Scale, to measure this construct. However … you guessed it: All the items were written in the pro-quest direction. … So we have our recurrent problem of not knowing how much Quest Scale scores represent “questing” and how much they reflect nefarious response sets. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2040

Categorization

• XREF: The monotone-item problem recurs throughout Altemeyer’s methodological critique — connects to his argument that many psychology scales are contaminated by response sets.