Previous DOSPERT Scale assessed risk-taking only in five content domains: financial decisions (separately for investing versus gambling), health/safety, recreational, ethical, and social decisions. In the previous version, respondents answered in two parts: In Part I, they rated the likelihood that they would engage in domain-specific risky activities (i.e., risk-taking subscale). Additionally, Part II assessed respondents’ perceptions of the magnitude of the risks (risk-perception subscale) and expected benefits of the activities (judged in Part I). This allowed for the assessment of a domain-general risk-attitude.

Original 40-Item DOSPERT Scale (2002)

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.
View PDF

Revised and Improved 30-Item 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.

Blais, A.-R., & Weber, E. U. (2006) A Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale for adult populations. Judgment and Decision Making, 1, 33-47.
View PDF

Recently, we started using a new way of analyzing the DOSPERT Scale, which only requires the Risk-Taking subscale, and analyzes the DOSPERT using the bifactor analysis (Frey et al., 2020; Highhouse et al., 2016).

New Procedure

• R package: A DOSPERT R-script for the new procedure is available in OSF that makes DOSPERT analysis using bi-factor analysis more convenient.
• Languages: Informations can be found at Translating the Scale.
• Qualtrics version of DOSPERT scale: A qsf file for a Qualtrics version of the current DOSPERT scale can be found here.
• Visit here for help on importing/exporting surveys in Qualtrics.

Previous Procedure (no longer recommended)

• R package: A DOSPERT R-scripts for the previous procedure is available that makes DOSPERT data cleaning and analysis quick and easy.
• Languages: Informations can be found at Translating the Scale.
• Qualtrics version of DOSPERT scale: A qsf file for a Qualtrics version of the previous DOSPERT scale can be found here.
• Visit here for help on importing/exporting surveys in Qualtrics.

Researchers are welcome to translate the scale into a desired language not listed here. If you do translate the scale, please send the translation and any papers resulting from it to the Research Coordinator listed in the Contact page.

Current DOSPERT Scale

The DOSPERT Scale is available in following languages:

• The DOSPERT Scale (2020) in English, German, Spanish, Dutch, French, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Hungarian, Polish, Danish, Italian

Previous DOSPERT Scale (no longer recommended)

• The DOSPERT Scale (2006) in English, German, Spanish, Dutch, French, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Hungarian, Polish, Danish, Italian
• The DOSPERT Scale (2002) in English, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Dutch, Chinese (Mandarin)
• 40-item DOSPERT Scale

New Scoring Procedure

• Scoring instructions for 30-item DOSPERT scale

Previous Scoring Procedure (no longer recommended)

• Scoring instructions for 30-item DOSPERT scale
• Scoring instructions for 40-item DOSPERT scale

New DOSPERT Norms

(forthcoming)

Old DOSPERT Norms

We ran a series of norming analyses with a sample of 3,124 (50% female) participants with an age range of 18-77 years (M = 36, Median = 33) who live in the United States. We conducted multiple regressions to test the relationship between demographic variables and average risk behavior for each of the five domains. Risk-behavior was determined by calculating the average score of responses for each domain. Results for the five domains are further explored below.

Financial

• Age had a negative relationship to financial risk-taking, such that older participants tended to be less financially risky, and women were less financially risky than men.
• Education and income were also significant predictors of financial risk behavior, where those who had higher incomes and were more educated tended to take more financial risks.
  *Republicans and Democrats do not differ in their risk-taking responses, while participants that identified as Independent engaged significantly more (p<.01) financial risk-taking.
• Black/African American respondents had higher average responses than White participants, while members of other racial groups did not significantly differ from White participants in their risk-taking preferences.

Social

• Age and gender were also significant predictors of social risk-taking, where older participants and women are significantly more likely to engage in socially risky behavior than younger people and men.
• Republicans reported higher risk-taking preferences than Democrats, but no significant differences between Independent and Democrat participant were found.
• Asian participants also reported significantly lower risk-taking compared to White participants.

Health & Safety

• Younger people, men, and those who reported lower levels of education tended to engage in riskier health & safety behaviors.
• Political affiliation and race were also significant predictors such that self-identified Independents indicated a higher likelihood of taking health and safety risks.
• Asian participants indicated a lower likelihood of taking these risks.

Recreational

• Younger participants and men indicated a higher propensity of risk-taking.
• More educated participants scored higher on recreational risk-taking.
• Black/African American participants were less risky than White participants.

Ethical

• Men and younger participants were more likely to be ethically risky.
• Republicans were less likely to be ethically risky as compared to Democrats.
• Hawaiian/Pacific Islander participants reported being more ethically risky than White participants.

Differences in risk-taking as a function of perceived risks:

• Frey, Duncan, and Weber (2020) paper Towards a typology of risk preference: Four risk profiles describe two thirds of individuals in a large sample of the US population from Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
• Highhouse, Nye, Zhang, and Rada (2016) paper Structure of the Dospert: Is there evidence for a general risk factor? from the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
• Bapna, Dellarocas, and Rice (2010) paper Vertically Differentiated Simultaneous Vickrey Auctions: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Management Science.
• Harris and Jenkins (2006) paper Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why do Women Take Fewer Risks than Men? from Judgment and Decision Making.
• Weber, Blais, and Betz (2002) paper A Domain-specific Risk-attitude Scale: Measuring Risk Perceptions and Risk Behaviors from the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
• Weber and Hsee (1998) paper Cross Cultured Differences in Risk Perception, but Cross Cultural Similarities in Attitudes Towards Perceived Risk from Management Science.

Differences in risk-taking as a function of expected benefits:

• Foster, Shenesey, and Goff (2009) paper 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) paper Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why do Women Take Fewer Risks than Men? from Judgment and Decision Making.
• Weber, Blais, and Betz (2002) paper A Domain-specific Risk-attitude Scale: Measuring Risk Perceptions and Risk Behaviors from the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.Differences in risk-taking among domains:
• Enström, R., & Schmaltz, R (2017). A Walk on the Wild Side: The Impact of Music on Risk-Taking Likelihood. Frontiers in Psychology.
• Wilke, Scheibehenne, Gaissmaier, McCanney, and Barrett (2014) paper Illusionary Pattern Detection in Habitual Gamblers from Evolution and Human Behavior.
• Wilke, Sherman, Curdt, Mondal, Fitzgerald, and Kruger (2014) paper An Evolutionary Domain-Specific Risk Scale from Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.
• Markiewicz, L. & Weber, E.U. (2013) paper DOSPERT’s gambling risk-taking scale predicts excessive stock trading from the Journal of Behavioral Finance.
• Mizobuchi, Chignell, Canella, and Eizenman (2013) article Individual Differences in Driving-Related Multitasking from Vocalage, Inc. and University of Toronto, Canada.
• Mishra, Lalumière, and Williams (2010) paper Gambling as a From of Risk-Taking: Individual Differences in Personality, Risk-Accepting Attitudes, and Behavioral Preferences for Risk from Personality and Individual Differences.
• Weller and Tikir (2010) paper Predicting Domain-Specific Risk Taking With the HEXACO Personality Structure from the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
• Blais and Weber (2006) paper A Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale for Adult Populations from Judgment and Decision Making.
• Hanoch, Johnson, and Wilke (2006) paper Domain Specificity in Experimental Measures and Participant Recruitment: An Application to Risk-Taking Behavior from Psychological Science.
• Weber, Blais, and Betz (2002) paper A Domain-specific Risk-attitude Scale: Measuring Risk Perceptions and Risk Behaviors from the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.

Differences in risk-taking among specific groups:

• Lozano, L.M., Megías, A., Catena, A., Perales, J.C., Baltruschat, S. & Candido, A (2017) paper Spanish validation of the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT-30) Scale from Psicothema.
• Li, Gao, Enkavi, Zaval, Weber and Johnson (2015) paper Sound Credit Scores and Financial Decision Despite Cognitive Aging from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• Blais and Weber (2006a) paper A Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale for Adult Populations from Judgment and Decision Making.
• Blais and Weber (2006b) paper Testing Invariance in Risk Taking: A Comparison Between Anglophone and Francophone Groups from Série Scientifique.
• Harris and Jenkins (2006) paper Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why do Women Take Fewer Risks than Men? from Judgment and Decision Making.
• Wilke, Hutchinson, Todd, and Kruger (2006) paper Is risk taking used as a cue in mate choice? from Evolutionary Psychology.
• Weber and Hsee (1998) paper Cross Cultured Differences in Risk Perception, but Cross Cultural Similarities in Attitudes Towards Perceived Risk from Management Science.

Neuroscientific and genetic research in which the DOSPERT Scale was used:

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