This study examines the psychometric qualities of two measures of sCripts for a consumer event. A laboratory experiment in which the measures' reliability and validity were evaluated produced some questions about the stability of retrospective self-report measures. However, the results were generally encouraging for the psychometric properties of an alternative measure employing a recognition task. We suggest further development of this measure to facilitate large-scale investigations of script-based processing in the consumer context. T here is a large body of research on the structure and function of memory that documents memory's influence on human behavior in general and on consumer behavior in particular. One conclusion that derives from this literature is that no single explanation of memory is entirely adequate to account for the diversity of human information processing strategies. Rather, both the nature of the to-be-stored information and expectations about its future use apparently influence memory structure.The present research involves one particular type of memory structure-scripts-that has been the subject of increasing attention in the recent consumerbehavior literature. However, both in the consumer context and elsewhere, the majority of script research has relied on measurement procedures of doubtful merit. Therefore, the present investigation seeks to evaluate the psychometric status of two script measures in an effort to facilitate further research of scriptbased processing in the consumer setting.The following discussion reviews the nature and function of scripts and summarizes relevant empirical findings. Next, it describes the methodological tradition that has prevailed in script research. Finally, it advances several propositions concerning the reliability and validity of two script measures and considers an empirical test of those propositions.
SCRIPTSScripts are one type of the broad classification of memory structures generally known as schemata. A
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