Attitude Toward the Ad (Focused Nostalgia)

What it measures

A six-item scale measuring the degree to which a specific advertisement evokes personal nostalgic responses — warm feelings and fond reminiscence about specific experiences and persons from one's own past. Items capture autobiographical memory activation, positive affect associated with recollection, and the degree to which the ad serves as a personalised reminder of the respondent's own youth and history. Distinguished from general nostalgia by its focus on the respondent's own personal history rather than a broader historical era.

Response format

Likert (format not specified)

Scale items

• Makes me think about persons, places, or things from my youth.
• Makes me feel good about a previous time – a time in my life.
• Makes me reminisce about a time in my life.
• I have warm feelings when reminiscing about this time from my youth.
• Evokes good feelings about a time in my life.
• Is a pleasant reminder of a time from my youth.

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 to focus participant attention on the specific advertisement. Single reliability estimate: α = .95 — Muehling & Parscal (2011). VALIDITY: Successfully used as a manipulation check for nostalgia type, providing limited predictive validity evidence. NOTE: This scale measures personal (autobiographical) nostalgia — distinct from the General Nostalgia (ATAG) and Pre-Birth Era Nostalgia (ATAPB) scales by the same authors, which capture broader and historical nostalgic responses respectively. All three should ideally be administered together in research designs comparing nostalgia types.

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.

Keywords