Dogmatism and Innovativeness: a Psychometric Evaluation of a New Measure of Dogmatism for Marketing

Abstract

Although the personality trait of dogmatism has been studied in consumer behavior, its reliable and vaUd measurement has often been controversial. A new measure of dogmatism has been proposed (Altemeyer 2002), but its psychometric characteristics have not been independently evaluated. The present study evaluates the DOG scale for dimensionality, internal consistency, and nomological validity using data from a sample of 742 US students and adults. The results show that DOG scale is internally consistent (α s=.90), but not unidimensional, with three factors emerging from a factor analysis. Although correlations of the three factors as well as the whole scale were consistently negative with two measures of innovativeness, indicating nomological validity for the scale, direction-of-item wording issues should be further examined.