Single versus Multiple Measurement of Attitudes A Meta-Analysis of Advertising Studies Validates the Single-Item Measure Approach

Academic researchers tend to use multiple items to measure a construct reliably, whereas practitioners tend to use single-item measures. But when constructs such as brand attitude, attitude toward the advertisement, and attitude toward behaviors are double concrete-with a clear, singular meaning in which the object being rated also is clear and singularly identifiable-a single-item measure suffices (Rossiter, 2011). Using the results of 189 advertising studies, the authors found no difference in effect sizes when the double-concrete dependent variables were measured with single or multiple items-which means data collection is more efficient and less tedious. That is good news for advertising researchers in an era of ever-decreasing response rates and attention spans of respondents.