An Item-Analytic Investigation of the Fishbein and Ajzen Multiplicative Scale: The Problem of a Simultaneous Negative Evaluation of Belief and Outcome

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Abstract
The purpose was to study the empirical item characteristic curves and the internal structure of the multiplicative scale of the Fishbein and Ajzen paradigm. In previous research, Fishbein and Ajzen derived total scores by means of a belief by outcome cross-product. However, this procedure may bias the meaning of the attitude construct due to the fact that a person can obtain a meaningless score on a particular item by endorsing a negative category on both components. The present study constitutes an empirical test of the extent and implications of this shortcoming. 180 volunteer subjects completed a 15-item attitude scale concerning (a) beliefs toward regular participation in physical activity and (b) evaluation of the corresponding outcomes. The results showed that most of the empirical item-characteristic curves are monotonic but that there is a significant association (transformed r = −.63) between the number of meaningless scores on a given item and item-total correlations. It is suggested that, when the Fishbein and Ajzen paradigm is used, the number of subjects who rate negatively on both the belief and the corresponding evaluation of outcome should be noted since their scores may reflect a biased attitude construct. This would constitute an additional step to the conventional item-analytic procedure.

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