SUPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale

Script Author: Katja Borchert, Ph.D. (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Created: January 28, 2013

Last Modified: January 12, 2025 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC

Background

This script implements the SUPPS-P impulsive behavior scale as discussed in Cyders et al (2014).

References

Supps:

Upps/Upps-P Scale:

https://www1.psych.purdue.edu/~dlynam/uppspage.htm

Duration

1.5 minutes

Description

20 4-point Likert Questions regarding impulsive behavior

Scoring

5 facets:

1) Negative Urgency (NURG): 6(R), 8(R), 13(R), 15(R)
"measures an individual’s tendency to act “impulsively” under conditions of negative affect" *

2) (lack of) Premeditation (PREM): 2, 5, 12, 19
"assesses an individual’s tendency to act without consideration of the potential consequences of the behavior" *

3) (lack of) Perseverance (PERS): 1, 4, 7, 11
"assesses an individual’s tendency to give up in the face of boredom, fatigue, or frustration." *

4) Sensation Seeking (SS): 9(R), 14(R), 16(R), 18(R)
"refers to an individual’s interest in and tendency to pursue activities that are exciting and novel" *

5) Positive Urgency (PURG): 3(R), 10(R), 17(R), 20(R)
"Positive Urgency, assesses an individual’s tendency to give in to impulses under conditions of high positive affect." *

(R) = reversed scoring

Items are initially scored on a scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 4 (strongly disagree)
Items are then automatically reversed-scored where appropriate to reflect that higher values
indicate more impulsive behavior


Cyders et al (2014, table1) report to reverse score items that would actually result in lower
scores for more impulsive behavior, despite the fact they also write that "Items with an (R) are reverse coded,
so that higher values indicate more impulsive behavior".

Example q1: "I generally like to see things through to the end.* (R)"
"On a four point scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 4 (strongly disagree)", if one strongly agrees with this statement,
the initial score of '1' would end up being coded as '4' as it's a R item;
yet we think that agreeing to this statement is the opposite of impulsive behavior and should result in a
low score not a high one.

In this script, we have thus coded all items in such a way that high scores on each question reflect a higher
degree of impulsivity. You can check the coding of each question under section QUESTIONS.
The final scores for each question can be referred from "/optionvalues"

Summary Data

File Name: supps_p_summary*.iqdat

Data Fields

Raw Data

File Name: supps.iqdat

Data Fields