Shopping Task Distraction

What it measures

Five items measure the extent to which a person had difficulty concentrating on a simulated grocery shopping task. Used across two MTurk experiments in which some participants were exposed to an unrelated phone conversation during the task, the scale source was not identified.

Response format

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

Scale items

• I was distracted while keeping track of the shopping items.
• I was totally focused on the shopping trip. (r)
• I had a hard time focusing on the shopping task.
• I had difficulty maintaining focus on the shopping task.
• It was easy to focus on the shopping task. (r)

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

Usage notes & scoring

Alphas were .90 and .88 in Studies 2 and 3, respectively. Items 2 and 5 are reverse-scored.

Citation

Sciandra, M. R., Inman, J. J., & Stephen, A. T. (2019). Smart phones, bad calls? The influence of consumer mobile phone use, distraction, and phone dependence on adherence to shopping plans. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47(4), 574–594.

Keywords