Ad Believability

What it measures

Ten bipolar adjective pairs assess the degree to which a specific advertisement is seen as believable, credible, trustworthy, and likely to be true.

Response format

7-point semantic differential

Scale items

• unbelievable / believable
• untrustworthy / trustworthy
• not convincing / convincing
• not credible / credible
• unreasonable / reasonable
• dishonest / honest
• questionable / unquestionable
• inconclusive / conclusive
• not authentic / authentic
• unlikely / likely

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Original scale by Beltramini (1982); alphas .90 (Beltramini 1988) and .97 (Beltramini and Stafford 1993). A three-item abbreviated version was used by Kukar-Kinney and Walters (2003). Applied by O'Cass to political campaign believability. Scale origin is a conference proceedings rather than a peer-reviewed journal.

Citation

Beltramini, R. F. (1982). Advertising perceived believability scale. In D. R. Corrigan, F. B. Kraft, & R. H. Ross (Eds.), Proceedings of the Southwestern Marketing Association (pp. 1–3). Southeast Missouri State University.

Keywords