Need for Cognition Scale

Technical Manual

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

Created: January 08, 2012

Last Modified: January 31, 2023 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC

Background

This script implements the 18 item Need for Cognition Scale by

Cacioppo,J.T., Petty,R.E. & Kao, C.F (1984). The efficient assessment of need for cognition. Journal of Personality Assessment, 48, 306-307.

Duration

3 minutes

Overview

participant works on 18 9-point Likert questions. Each question has 9 answer choices, ranging from very strong
agreement to very strong disagreement.

Instructions

instructions for the questions are not originals; they can be changed under
VALUES-> EDITABLE PARAMETERS -> parameters.instructions

Scoring

1) Questions:
18 9-point Likert questions total, 4 questions per page


2) Required Responses:
By default the answer to each question is required (Go to QUESTIONS and edit each individual
question)

Summary Data

File Name: needcognitionscale_summary*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
inquisit.version Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
startDate Date the session was run
startTime Time the session was run
subjectId Participant ID
groupId Group number
sessionId Session number
elapsedTime Session duration in ms
completed 0 = Test was not completed
1 = Test was completed
totalScore Sum of the 18 individual question scores, rated on a scale from -4 to +4
(Total Range: -72 to +72)
+ responses to all individual questions

Raw Data

File Name: NCS.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
date Date the session was run
time Time the session was run
subject, group, session With the current subject/groupnumber/session id
build Inquisit version number
q*_response Response given (in assigned values -> reversed scoring already taken into account for R questions)
4 = very strong agreement
-4 = very strong disagreement
q*_latency How much time (in ms) the participant spent on the surveyPage with this particular question (the last time this particular surveyPage was visited)

Parameters

The procedure can be adjusted by setting the following parameters.

NameDescriptionDefault
instructions The wording used in instructions