Side Streets and U-Turns: Effects of Context Switching,Direction Switching,and Factor Switching on Interitem Correlations and Misresponse Rates

This study tested implications of the context switching perspective proposed by Hamby, Ickes, and Babcock (2016 Hamby, T., Ickes, W., &; Babcock, M. (2016). Evidence for context switching in the effects of average item length and item-length variability on internal consistency. Journal of Personality Assessment, 98, 491–502. doi:10.1080/00223891.2016.1147044Taylor &; Francis Online], Web of Science ®] , Google Scholar]). Using trained raters to assess the amount of reframing required to interpret the meaning of the subsequent (second) item within all adjacent item pairs, we first established that this process variable could be measured reliably. Then, in the data for 18 personality measures drawn from 3 individual-difference domains, we found that the amount of reframing (i.e., context switching) needed to interpret successive items predicted both lower interitem correlations and a greater percentage of misresponders. Similarly, item pairs that were mismatched in “directional” wording also predicted both lower interitem correlations and more misresponders. Finally, item pairs representing different factors predicted lower interitem correlations. Although the effects of direction switching and factor switching were partially mediated by the amount of reframing required, they remained significant even when the mediating effect of reframing was statistically controlled. These results indicate that interpreting the meaning of test items is a task for which the level of difficulty can vary with each successive item, as a function of how the current item compares to the previous item in aspects such as its context generality or specificity, directional wording, and content domain.