A four-item unipolar scale measuring the subjective sense of confidence a person has in their thoughts, judgments, or responses — particularly in attitude or evaluation contexts. Items use single adjective descriptors (confident, certain, valid, sure) to capture the metacognitive certainty dimension of judgment quality. Originally applied to measure confidence in cognitive responses to advertising stimuli, the scale is broadly applicable wherever attitude certainty or response confidence is a theoretically relevant variable.
Unipolar (not at all / extremely)
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
Multiple reliability estimates across studies and applications: α = .80 and α = .70 (Studies 1 and 2, Briñol, Petty & Tormala 2004); α = .81 (Argo, Dahl & Manchanda 2005, Journal of Consumer Research 32, 207–212); α = .97 (Argo, Popa & Smith 2010, Journal of Marketing 74(4), 97–109). The Study 2 estimate of .70 falls below threshold; the scale is included on the basis of the .97 peak estimate and the .80-.81 estimates in independent studies. NOTE: A 3-item version (confident, certain, valid) was used by Briñol et al. (2004); the 4-item version adding 'sure' is used in other applications. Response scale anchored at 'not at all' and 'extremely'.
Briñol, Pablo, Richard E. Petty, and Zakary L. Tormala (2004). Self-validation of cognitive responses to advertisements. Journal of Consumer Research, 30(4), 559–573.
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