DOSPERT Scale

Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) Scale 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.

Please feel free to use any of these scales with their appropriate citations. The citation for a specific scale can be located within the documents linked below. Additionally, for use of any of the translations of the DOSPERT scale, please make sure to cite the appropriate paper from below.

Original 40-Item Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (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.

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.

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