Decision Scales and Tools
Over the years, my collaborators and I have developed a number of useful instruments that assess individual differences in decision making, ranking from domain-specific risk attitudes (the DoSpeRT Scale), risk taking in dynamic risk situations (the Columbia Card Task), and a free, public resource that categorizes and describes the most common individual difference measures used in JDM research (the Decision Making Individual Differences Inventory, or DMIDI).
Please feel free to use any of these scales with their appropriate citations. Additionally, for use of any of the translations of the DOSPERT (2002 & 2006) scales, please make sure to cite the paper below.
- Weber, E. U., Blais, A.-R., & Betz, N. (2002). A domain-specific risk-attitude scale: Measuring risk perceptions and risk behaviors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 15, 263-290.
- Blais, A.-R., & Weber, E. U. (2006) A Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale for adult populations. Judgment and Decision Making, 1, 33-47.
Original 40-Item Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) Scale (2002)
It is obvious that people differ in the way they resolve work-related or personal decisions that involve risk and uncertainty. DOSPERT is a psychometric scale that assesses risk taking in five content domains: financial decisions (separately for investing versus gambling), health/safety, recreational, ethical, and social decisions. Respondents rate the likelihood that they would engage in domain-specific risky activities (Part I). An optional Part II assesses respondents’ perceptions of the magnitude of the risks and expected benefits of the activities judged in Part I.
- The DOSPERT Scale (2002) in various languages: English, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Dutch, Chinese (Mandarin)
- 40-item DOSPERT Scale (2003 update)
Revised and Improved 30-Item Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) Scale (2006)
To generate a short version of the scale with items that would be interpretable by a wider range of respondents in different cultures, the 40 items of the original scale (Weber, Blais, & Betz, 2002) were reduced to 30 items. For details see Blais and Weber (2006).
- The DOSPERT Scale (2006) in various languages: English, German, Spanish, Dutch, French, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Hungarian, Polish
- Scoring instructions for DOSPERT scale (2006)
For more Information see: dospert.org
Bernd Figner, Elke Weber
Risk taking behaviors in everyday-life typically follow a characteristic developmental pattern. They are low during childhood, increase sharply with puberty, peak in adolescence and early adulthood, and decline again during middle and late adulthood. Though well documented, e.g., from accident statistics, the reasons are still not very well understood. Recent neuroscientific research suggested that the competition between distinct neural networks determines risk taking. Only when affective processes are triggered, adolescents tend show more impulsive risk taking and suboptimal information use than both children and adults due to a usually transient dominance of the affective over the cognitive-control network.
We developed the “Columbia Card Task” (CCT) to investigate developmental changes and individual differences in healthy individuals across the life span and in populations such as substance users. The CCT enables us to compare affect-based versus deliberative risky decisions and their triggering mechanisms as well as predictors of risk taking, such as inhibitory control, need-for-arousal, and impulsivity. Besides behavioral methods, we are using physiological measures, brain imaging, and brain stimulation techniques.
For more information (including CCT demo versions), please visit CCT Webpage
(DMIDI, rhymes with P Diddy)
With Kirstin Appelt, Kerry Milch and Michel Handgraaf
The DMIDI is a catalogue of over 200 individual difference measures commonly used in judgment and decision-making research.Basic descriptive information (including references & scale information) is available for all measures. Measures that are publicly available are posted for easy downloading for research and educational use only. Detailed information on history of use (including significance and consistency of results) is available for a subset of measures.
View PDF of a paper describing the instrument.