Reliability of the sliding scale for collecting affective responses to words

Behav Res Methods. 2018 Dec;50(6):2399-2407. doi: 10.3758/s13428-018-1016-9.

Abstract

Warriner, Shore, Schmidt, Imbault, and Kuperman, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71; 71-88 (2017) have recently proposed a slider task in which participants move a manikin on a computer screen toward or further away from a word, and the distance (in pixels) is a measure of the word's valence. Warriner, Shore, Schmidt, Imbault, and Kuperman, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71; 71-88 (2017) showed this task to be more valid than the widely used rating task, but they did not examine the reliability of the new methodology. In this study we investigated multiple aspects of this task's reliability. In Experiment 1 (Exps. 1.1-1.6), we showed that the sliding scale has high split-half reliability (r = .868 to .931). In Experiment 2, we also showed that the slider task elicits consistent repeated responses both within a single session (Exp. 2: r = .804) and across two sessions separated by one week (Exp. 3: r = .754). Overall, the slider task, in addition to having high validity, is highly reliable.

Keywords: Arousal; Emotion; Reliability; Valence.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Arousal
  • Canada
  • Emotions*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Language Tests*
  • Language*
  • Male
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Task Performance and Analysis*
  • Weights and Measures