Mastodawn

This blogpost's sources are completely challenging my pre-existing assumptions about the methodological argument for using reverse-coded items on a survey. I might have to let the evidence totally change one of my scientific practices despite my intuitive feeling of what's "right." NEAT!

https://yannicmeier.de/2026/03/03/why-reversed-items-can-be-problematic-in-survey-research/

Why reversed items can be problematic in survey research

In quantitative psychological research, questionnaires with Likert-style items are mostly used to assess variables like emotions, cognitions, and dispositions. Sometimes, it is possible to fall bac…

Yannic Meier

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Dan Sugalski 6d ago

@grimalkina oh, huh, that’s interesting. As a survey taker I dislike surveys that mix in negated questions because half the time I miss the negation (yay, reading comprehension I guess) but I never considered whether I weighed positive and negative adjectives describing the same thing the same. Seem unlikely I do, from this write up, and I suspect it’s dead on.

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Cat Hicks 6d ago

@wordshaper it DEFINITELY makes it a more burdensome cognitive task for readers! But so much of psychology assumes that's worth it and now I don't think so

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monstreline

@grimalkina @wordshaper in all honesty, if a survey switches back and forth (positive/negative) I run out of cognitive steam and either don’t complete the survey OR stop reading the questions and circle things randomly. But I don’t realize at the time that I’m doing it…my brain just switches to automatic behaviour mode and it’s only later when someone asks a follow up question that I realize I have no idea what I answered or what the questions were.