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.

The DOSPERT Scale (2002) in various languages: English, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Dutch, Chinese (Mandarin)
40-item DOSPERT Scale (2003 update)
Scoring instructions for DOSPERT scale (2002)

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).

The DOSPERT Scale (2006) in various languages: English, German, Spanish, Dutch, French, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Hungarian, Polish
Scoring instructions for DOSPERT scale (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:

Bapna, Dellarocas, and Rice (2010) article Vertically Differentiated Simultaneous Vickrey Auctions: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Management Science.
Harris and Jenkins (2006) article Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why do Women Take Fewer Risks than Men? from Judgment and Decision Making.
Weber, Blais, and Betz (2002) article A Domain-specific Risk-attitude Scale: Measuring Risk Perceptions and Risk Behaviors from the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
Weber and Hsee (1998) article Cross Cultured Differences in Risk Perception, but Cross Cultural Similarities in Attitudes Towards Perceived Risk from Management Science.

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

Foster, Shenesey, and Goff (2009) article Why do narcissists take more risks? Testing the roles of perceived risks and benefits of risky behaviors from Personality and Individual Differences.
Harris and Jenkins (2006) article Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why do Women Take Fewer Risks than Men? from Judgment and Decision Making.
Weber, Blais, and Betz (2002) article A Domain-specific Risk-attitude Scale: Measuring Risk Perceptions and Risk Behaviors from the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.

These articles show differences in risk-taking among domains:

Blais and Weber (2006) article A Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale for Adult Populations from Judgment and Decision Making.
Hanoch, Johnson, and Wilke (2006) article Domain Specificity in Experimental Measures and Participant Recruitment: An Application to Risk-Taking Behavior from Psychological Science.
Markiewicz, L. and Weber, E.U. (In press). DOSPERT's gambling risk-taking scale predicts excessive stock trading from the Journal of Behavioral Finance.
Mishra, Lalumière, and Williams (2010) article Gambling as a Form of Risk-Taking: Individual Differences in Personality, Risk-Accepting Attitudes, and Behavioral Preferences for Risk from Personality and Individual Differences.
Mizobuchi, Chignell, Canella, and Eizenman (2013) paper Individual Differences in Driving-Related Multitasking from Vocalage, Inc. and University of Toronto, Canada.
Weber, Blais, and Betz (2002) article A Domain-specific Risk-attitude Scale: Measuring Risk Perceptions and Risk Behaviors from the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
Weller and Tikir (2010) article Predicting Domain-Specific Risk Taking With the HEXACO Personality Structure from Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
Wilke, Scheibehenne, Gaissmaier, McCanney, and Barrett (2014) article Illusionary Pattern Detection in Habitual Gamblers from Evolution and Human Behavior.
Wilke, Sherman, Curdt, Mondal, Fitzgerald, and Kruger (2014) article An Evolutionary Domain-Speciﬁc Risk Scale from Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.

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

Blais and Weber (2006a) article A Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale for Adult Populations from Judgment and Decision Making.
Blais and Weber (2006b) article Testing Invariance in Risk Taking: A Comparison Between Anglophone and Francophone Groups from Série Scientifique.
Harris and Jenkins (2006) article Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why do Women Take Fewer Risks than Men? from Judgment and Decision Making.
Weber and Hsee (1998) article Cross Cultured Differences in Risk Perception, but Cross Cultural Similarities in Attitudes Towards Perceived Risk from Management Science.
Wilke, Hutchinson, Todd, and Kruger (2006) article Is risk taking used as a cue in mate choice? from Evolutionary Psychology.

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

Alexander and Brown (2010) article Competition between learned reward and error outcome predictions in anterior cingulate cortex from NeuroImage.
Brown and Braver (2007) article Risk prediction and aversion by anterior cingulate cortex from Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience.
Brown and Braver (2008) article A computational model of risk, conflict, and individual difference effects in the anterior cingulate cortex from Brain Research.
Crisan, Pana, Vulturar, Heilman, Szekely, Druga, Dragos, and Miu (2009) article Genetic contributions of the serotonin transporter to social learning of fear and economic decision making from Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
Lee and Jeong (2013) article Correlation of Risk-Taking Propensity with Cross-Frequency Phase-Amplitude Coupling in the Resting EEG from Clinical Neurophysiology.
Roberts, Newell, Simões-Franklin, and Garavan (2008) article Menstrual cycle phase modulates cognitive control over male but not female stimuli from Brain Research.