Abstract
Samples of undergraduates from 30 colleges and universities responded in two ways to statements about how often they had engaged in various activities: first by indicating “never,” “occasionally,” “often,” or “very often,” and second by indicating the number of times they had engaged in the activity. Comparisons of the two sets of responses indicates that: (1) there are wide individual differences in the meaning attributed to each response category; (2) despite individual differences, the group data show clear modal differences between occasionally and often and between often and very often; (3) the median difference in the meaning of each of the response categories is very small between one institution and the next and between types of institutions; and (4) based on the present data, there is no compelling need to develop separate norms for different types of institutions.
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Robert Pace, C., Friedlander, J. The meaning of response categories: How often is “occasionally,” “often,” and “very often”?. Res High Educ 17, 267–281 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00976703
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00976703