DOSPERT Scale

Please feel free to use any of these scales with their appropriate citations. Additionally, for use of any of the translations of the DOSPERT (2002 & 2006) scales, please make sure to cite the paper below.

  • Weber, E. U., Blais, A.-R., & Betz, N. (2002). A domain-specific risk-attitude scale: Measuring risk perceptions and risk behaviors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 15, 263-290.
  • Blais, A.-R., & Weber, E. U. (2006) A Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale for adult populations. Judgment and Decision Making, 1, 33-47.

Original 40-Item Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) Scale (2002)

It is obvious that people differ in the way they resolve work-related or personal decisions that involve risk and uncertainty. DOSPERT is a psychometric scale that assesses risk taking in five content domains: financial decisions (separately for investing versus gambling), health/safety, recreational, ethical, and social decisions. Respondents rate the likelihood that they would engage in domain-specific risky activities (Part I). An optional Part II assesses respondents’ perceptions of the magnitude of the risks and expected benefits of the activities judged in Part I.

Revised and Improved 30-Item Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) Scale (2006)

To generate a short version of the scale with items that would be interpretable by a wider range of respondents in different cultures, the 40 items of the original scale (Weber, Blais, & Betz, 2002) were reduced to 30 items. For details see Blais and Weber (2006).

 

For more information, please refer to the DOSPERT website:

Official DOSPERT Website

DOSPERT-Related Publications


These articles show differences in risk-taking as a function of perceived risks:


These articles show differences in risk-taking as a function of expected benefits:


These articles show differences in risk-taking among domains:

These articles show differences in risk-taking among specific groups:


These articles discuss neuroscientific and genetic research in which the DOSPERT Scale was used: