An Examination of the Reliability of Scores from Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scales, Form V

Abstract

A reliability generalization (RG) was conducted on Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale, Form V (SSS-V). Two hundred and forty-four empirical articles on the SSS-V were reviewed spanning a 20-year period but fewer than 9% provided useable reliability estimates. One hundred and thirteen reliability coefficients were collected from 21 published studies for the five scales and subscales of SSS-V. The reliability of scores was marginal for four of the five scales and low for the Boredom Susceptibility scale (median = .61). Mean age of the respondents had a statistically significantly relationship with score reliability, with older respondents’scores having higher reliability for three of the five scales. Unfortunately, the infrequent reporting of basic descriptive information hindered further examination of factors that may have been related to score reliability. Although certain descriptive information (e.g., score reliability estimates, score SDs) may not bethefocus of substantivestudies, theaccumulation of knowledgeover time requires more complete data reporting in all research, even nonmeasurement studies.

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