Attitude Toward the Ad (Pre-Birth Era Nostalgia)

What it measures

A six-item scale measuring the degree to which an advertisement evokes nostalgic feelings for an era that predates the respondent's own birth — historical nostalgia for a romanticised past the individual did not personally experience. Items tap positive affect about a pre-birth era, wistful longing for an inaccessible historical time, and pleasant associations with depictions of that earlier period. Theoretically distinct from personal nostalgia (rooted in autobiographical memory) and general nostalgia (temporally unspecified), this scale captures what has been termed 'historical' or 'vicarious' nostalgia.

Response format

Likert (format not specified)

Scale items

• Makes me feel good about a previous time – a time before my birth.
• Is a pleasant reminder of a time before I was born.
• Reminds me of an era before my birth.
• Makes me wish I could go back to a time before I was born.
• Makes me reminisce about a time before my birth.
• Evokes good feelings about a time before I was born.

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

Usage notes & scoring

SCALE STEM: A blank in the stem should be replaced with the name of the brand or product featured in the ad. Single reliability estimate: α = .94 — Muehling & Parscal (2011). VALIDITY: Successfully used as a manipulation check for historical nostalgia advertising condition, providing predictive validity evidence. NOTE: This scale measures historical (pre-birth era) nostalgia — conceptually distinct from the Personal Nostalgia (ATAFN) and General Nostalgia (ATAG) scales from the same study. All three scales should be used together when the research aim is to differentiate the type of nostalgic response elicited by different advertising executions.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Muehling, Darrel D. and Vincent J. Parscal (2011). An empirical investigation of the differential effects of personal, historical, and non-nostalgic advertising on consumer responses. Journal of Advertising, 40(2), 107–122.

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