Heuristic Processing (Social Media Post)

What it measures

This scale measures how little time and cognitive effort a person devotes to processing the information in a particular social media post. Hernández-Ortega et al. (2022) used it in a pilot study reported in Web Appendix A, drawing items from three prior risk-communication and information-processing scales and adapting them for the social media context.

Response format

7-point Likert (1=Strongly disagree, 7=Strongly agree)

Scale items

• I skimmed through the post quickly.
• While reading the post, I focused on only some of it.
• While reading the post, I did not think about the information presented.
• I ignored the content of the post.

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

Usage notes & scoring

Alpha was .863 (Hernández-Ortega et al. 2022, Web Appendix A), based on a pilot sample of 196 MTurk respondents. Validity was not discussed. Adapted for the social media context from items across three prior scales; the focal paper reports its own reliability from newly collected data.

Citation

Hernández-Ortega, Blanca I., Michael A. Stanko, Rishika Rishika, Francisco-Jose Molina-Castillo, and Jose Franco (2022), "Brand-Generated Social Media Content and Its Differential Impact on Loyalty Program Members," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 50 (5), 1071-1090.

Keywords