Notes on the RBQ v3.0
September, 2006
The Riverside Behavioral Q-Sort (RBQ; Funder, Furr &
Colvin, 2000) has enjoyed success as a tool for the assessment of behavior at
the midlevel of analysis – avoiding micromeasurments
such as nods or foot-taps that do little to illuminate the underlying
psychological processes that cause them.
Recent research, however, examining the relationships between persons,
situations, and behaviors has clarified the need for a revision. Originally constructed for measuring behavior
in a videotaped, experimental session, the RBQ becomes a less-than-perfect tool
when used to describe behaviors of people outside this setting. This is partly due to the presence of items
that are not as salient in a generalized setting (e.g., item #1:
“Expresses awareness of being on camera and/or in an experiment”), and partly
due to the absence of items that
might be useful in describing behavior outside of the laboratory.
In order to remedy this, each item was examined with one of three outcomes in mind: to leave it "as is," to modify it, or to delete it. To its credit, 36 of the original 64 items (56.25%) were fine exactly as they were; 27 items (42.18%) were altered in some way, and only 1 item was deleted. 4 completely new items were added, bringing the number of items in version 3.0 of the RBQ up to 67.
This revision was completed by