Want to know what is going on behind the scenes at Marketing Scales? Read below about what is being worked on and what is in the planning stage.
After 22 years of reviewing scales, Dr. Bruner decided to produce a series of blogs that deal with troublesome issues he routinely comes across in his review work. He calls them Bruner’s Scale-Related Pet Peeves. (To follow his tweets at Twitter, look for marketingscales.) The discussion of each Pet Peeve is provided under News at the Office of Scale Research (the academic companion to this site housed at Southern Illinois University).
In the most recent posting, Dr. Bruner discusses the process of picking scales to use in a study. He is concerned that many researchers are not doing an adequate job of considering the alternatives available to them. Read about FAILURE TO CONSIDER ALTERNATIVE MEASURES.
One of the purposes of this website is to encourage researchers to use better measures than they have in the past and to find them easily. Too many scales have been unnecessarily developed when good measures already existed.
As of early 2012, the database has over 2,500 reviewed scales. About 2,000 of the reviews are edited versions of ones that were originally published in Volumes 1-5 of the Marketing Scales Handbook series. Over 500 more were added last Fall that are post-Volume 5. The database will continue to grow in size as Dr. Bruner reviews more scales. The current schedule is to add 5 new reviews each week and feature them on the homepage and elsewhere at the site. The bottom line is that if you do not find something of interest in the database today, try back later when more have been added.
Beyond the new reviews being added to the database each week, the other new additions to the website are bundles of related reviews. As an alternative to laboriously shifting through the hundreds of reviews, trying to figure out which scales are best for use in a questionnaire, Dr. Bruner has used his expertise to assemble the ones he believes are the best available when studying certain topics. The first three topics are engagement, purchasing, and nutrition. Not only do these bundles make a researcher's job of finding good scales much easier, but they cost less as well. By purchasing scales in a bundle they are half the price they would be if purchased separately. More bundles will be developed over time and suggestions are welcomed! In the meantime, it is expected that bundles related to technology, websites, product quality, satisfaction, loyalty, and charitable giving will be development in the first half of 2012.