Factors defined by negatively keyed items: The result of careless respondents?

Abstract

A frequently occurring phenomenon in factor and cluster analysis of personality or attitude scale items is that all or nearly all questionnaire items that are negatively keyed will define a single factor. Although substantive interpretations of these negative factors are usually attempted, this study demonstrates that the negative factor could be produced by a relatively small portion of the respondents who fail to attend to the negative-positive wording of the items. Data were generated using three different correlation matrices, which demonstrated that regardless of data source, when only 10% of the respondents are careless in this fashion, a clearly definable negative factor is generated. Recommendations for instrument development and data editing are presented.