Reducing the burden of psychological questionnaire measures through selective item re-weighting

Questionnaire measures are central to many areas of study within the psychological sciences. However, they often place a heavy burden on participants; questionnaires are frequently lengthy and unengaging, and with participants often required to complete multiple measures within a single study, this...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Toby Wise, Nura Sidarus
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: The Royal Society 2025-04-01
Series:Royal Society Open Science
Subjects:
Online Access:https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.241857
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1849725850036994048
author Toby Wise
Nura Sidarus
author_facet Toby Wise
Nura Sidarus
author_sort Toby Wise
collection DOAJ
description Questionnaire measures are central to many areas of study within the psychological sciences. However, they often place a heavy burden on participants; questionnaires are frequently lengthy and unengaging, and with participants often required to complete multiple measures within a single study, this results in lower data quality, increased cost and a poor participant experience. Here, we introduce a straightforward method for creating short versions of existing measures that are able to accurately determine participants’ sum scores, subscale scores or factor scores. Our method, referred to as Factor Score Item Reduction with Lasso Estimator, uses Lasso-regularized regression to select items and weight them such that true scores can be predicted accurately from a reduced item set. We demonstrate the performance of this method on an example dataset, and provide code and guidance for implementing the approach.
format Article
id doaj-art-cbcba9c09da4473aba8b51d2709ac5ae
institution DOAJ
issn 2054-5703
language English
publishDate 2025-04-01
publisher The Royal Society
record_format Article
series Royal Society Open Science
spelling doaj-art-cbcba9c09da4473aba8b51d2709ac5ae2025-08-20T03:10:21ZengThe Royal SocietyRoyal Society Open Science2054-57032025-04-0112410.1098/rsos.241857Reducing the burden of psychological questionnaire measures through selective item re-weightingToby Wise0Nura Sidarus1Department of Neuroimaging, King’s College London, London, UKDepartment of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, UKQuestionnaire measures are central to many areas of study within the psychological sciences. However, they often place a heavy burden on participants; questionnaires are frequently lengthy and unengaging, and with participants often required to complete multiple measures within a single study, this results in lower data quality, increased cost and a poor participant experience. Here, we introduce a straightforward method for creating short versions of existing measures that are able to accurately determine participants’ sum scores, subscale scores or factor scores. Our method, referred to as Factor Score Item Reduction with Lasso Estimator, uses Lasso-regularized regression to select items and weight them such that true scores can be predicted accurately from a reduced item set. We demonstrate the performance of this method on an example dataset, and provide code and guidance for implementing the approach.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.241857measure developmentquestionnairespsychometrics
spellingShingle Toby Wise
Nura Sidarus
Reducing the burden of psychological questionnaire measures through selective item re-weighting
Royal Society Open Science
measure development
questionnaires
psychometrics
title Reducing the burden of psychological questionnaire measures through selective item re-weighting
title_full Reducing the burden of psychological questionnaire measures through selective item re-weighting
title_fullStr Reducing the burden of psychological questionnaire measures through selective item re-weighting
title_full_unstemmed Reducing the burden of psychological questionnaire measures through selective item re-weighting
title_short Reducing the burden of psychological questionnaire measures through selective item re-weighting
title_sort reducing the burden of psychological questionnaire measures through selective item re weighting
topic measure development
questionnaires
psychometrics
url https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.241857
work_keys_str_mv AT tobywise reducingtheburdenofpsychologicalquestionnairemeasuresthroughselectiveitemreweighting
AT nurasidarus reducingtheburdenofpsychologicalquestionnairemeasuresthroughselectiveitemreweighting