Perceived Political Campaign Argument Strength

What it measures

The scale measures how convincing a political campaign message's argument is perceived to be, and how strongly it provides a reason to vote for the issue. Seiders, Flynn, and Nenkov (2022) adapted four of the nine items from an established perceived-argument-strength measure by Zhao et al. (2011).

Response format

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

Scale items

• The campaign argument used in this message is convincing.
• The campaign argument gives a reason for voting to support __________ that is important to me.
• The campaign argument helped me feel confident about how to best vote regarding __________.
• The reason the campaign argument gave for voting for __________ is a strong reason.

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

Usage notes & scoring

Used across three experiments, the scale showed strong reliability (α = .90; Seiders, Flynn, and Nenkov 2022, Web Appendix W10), though this single value was not linked to a specific experiment. Validity was not separately discussed. A mirrored version exists for arguing against an issue (swapping "support"/"defeat" and "for"/"against" in items 2 and 4). The blank should be filled with the name of the focal ballot issue.

Citation

Seiders, Kathleen, Andrea Godfrey Flynn, and Gergana Y. Nenkov (2022), "How Industries Use Direct-to-Public Persuasion in Policy Conflicts: Asymmetries in Public Voting Responses," Journal of Marketing, 86 (2), 126–146.

Keywords

More Political & Social Marketing scales

• Issue Acceptability Perception2022 · 3 items
• Political Candidate Image1977 · 12 items
• Voter Choice Confidence2002 · 3 items
• Attitude Toward Voting2002 · 4 items
• Political Party Evaluation2022 · 5 items
• Issue Importance2022 · 3 items