A child psychologist asked me years ago how I knew whether a scale was working. His comment was that developing a new attribute scale would be cause for intense debate amongst peers and colleagues. First and foremost, you need to have some sense that the scale means something to a young consumer. How do you know that? As your interviewers. Anyone who works with young children in educational and other circles will tell you that if an idea or concept is clear to kids, the “lights go on”.
When you are briefing interviewers about a research project and new scales are involved, ask them to give you feedback on whether a scale “works” or not. They will know. With very young children, if they understand a scale concept the eyes and face will tell you everything. It will be obvious if the idea, at least, is “working”.
Beyond that, you use the standard techniques which all of use to check how effective our scales are. How well does the scale help us to differentiate among products. We want to “pull apart” products, scales which help us do that are better than those which do not. How well are the children using the scale? Is there “clumping” at one end or the other of the scale. Are they using the range of the scale? What does the spread of data look like? Are these young consumers just choosing categories at random or does the data suggest they both understand the scale and can use it in a coherent way?
Brilliant Reflections/Consumer Research Specialists 