Personal Involvement Inventory for Advertising

What it measures

The PIIA is a ten-item refinement of the original 20-item PII (Zaichkowsky, 1985), developed specifically to measure involvement with advertisements. Zaichkowsky (1994) used item-total correlations and factor analysis to select the ten highest-loading items from the PII, all loading on a single factor. The PIIA maintains comparable reliability (alpha > .95) to the full PII. Validated in advertising exposure studies demonstrating discriminant validity across high- and low-relevance ad stimuli, and predictive validity for attitude toward the ad (Aad) and processing depth. Scores range 10–70.

Response format

7-point semantic differential scale; 10 bipolar adjective pairs; items summed (range 10–70); higher scores = greater advertising involvement

Scale items

• Important / Unimportant
• Of no concern / Of concern to me
• Irrelevant / Relevant
• Means a lot to me / Means nothing to me
• Useless / Useful
• Valuable / Worthless
• Trivial / Fundamental
• Boring / Interesting
• Unexciting / Exciting
• Not needed / Needed

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

Usage notes & scoring

The referent for PIIA items is the specific advertisement, not the product class. When both product and advertising involvement are measured, use full PII for product and PIIA for advertising. PIIA scores correlate with Aad, cognitive elaboration, and information recall.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Zaichkowsky, J.L. (1994). The personal involvement inventory: Reduction, revision, and application to advertising. Journal of Advertising, 23(4), 59–70.

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