Standards for scale development in marketing: Elevating the role of theory
提出一个改进的量表开发流程模型，强调理论在创建有意义、有效且新颖的量表中的作用，并基于对25年来顶级营销期刊中量表开发论文的系统回顾，给出避免常见陷阱的建议和最佳实践。
Abstract The latent nature of many phenomena we study in marketing necessitates the use of multi-item scales to adequately reflect construct richness. Ensuring that these scales are both valid and reliable provides a critical foundation for subsequent research. In pursuit of this goal, we propose a refined scale-development process model that builds on existing standards while emphasizing the role of theory for creating meaningful, valid, and novel scales. Further, we use a “methods-in-use” approach to systematically review scale-development papers published in premier marketing journals over the past 25 years to identify areas both where marketing scholars appropriately use established guidelines, but also where elements are executed with insufficient rigor. This leads to recommendations to help scholars avoid some common pitfalls we observed in reviewing and evaluating extant scale-development research. Finally, drawing on our framework in conjunction with observations of current scale development practices as well as recent methodological advances (e.g., the emergence of AI), we delineate best practices for creating high-quality scales.