An Assessment of the Reliability and Validity of Husband and Wife Self-Report Purchase Decision Making Measures

An assessment was made of the reliability and validity of self-report measures of three separate constructs hypothesized to operate in husband and wife decision making for durable goods purchases. In addition to the traditional construct of Influence, Importance, and Participation in the decision were also examined through the use of constant sum scaled responses for both husbands and wives. Following Davis' (1976) admonition to focus on the decision process, the present study conceptualized the purchase decision as consisting of three stages with multiple subdecisions in each stage. The results of a multitrait-multimethod matrix analysis support the use of a constant sum scaling approach to measuring the three constructs. The findings also indicate the existence of two dimensions within the purchase decision processfor the durable goods of automobiles and family room furniture. These dimensions were labeled resource allocation and variant selection decisions. The findings also suggest that importance is a global construct in decision making while in fluence and participation are more purchase situation specific.