Task Enjoyment Scale

What it measures

Seven items (or a four-item short form) measure the degree to which a person found a particular task enjoyable, interesting, and engaging. Items cover affective experience during the task, perceived interest, and retrospective pleasure. Two items (3 and 4) are reverse-scored and assess boredom and lack of attentional engagement. A blank in each item should be filled with a word or phrase identifying the specific task being evaluated.

Scale items

• I enjoyed doing the _____ task very much.
• The _____ task was fun to do.
• I thought the _____ task was a boring activity. (r)
• The _____ task did not hold my attention at all. (r)
• I would describe this _____ task as very interesting.
• I thought the _____ task was quite enjoyable.
• While I was doing the _____ task, I was thinking about how much I enjoyed it.

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

Usage notes & scoring

Adapted by Chen and Sengupta (2014) from the interest/enjoyment subscale of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (Ryan et al. 1991). The seven-item version was used in Study 1; the four-item short form (items 1, 2, 3, and 7) was used in Study 3. The response format is assumed to be a seven-point scale anchored at not at all / very much, inferred from the broader study measures, but this was not explicitly stated. No formal validity analysis was reported. The scale was used in the context of food-sampling and shopping tasks; the blank-fill design makes it adaptable to diverse task types with minimal adjustment. Items 3 and 4 should be reverse-scored prior to computing composite scores.

Citation

Chen, F., & Sengupta, J. (2014). Forced to be bad: The positive impact of low-autonomy vice consumption on consumer vitality. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(4), 1089-1107.

Keywords