60 Boston University students judged the relative number of small filled circles on each of 10 cards. One-third used an open-ended scale comprising a designated “average” category and as many above or below average categories as they desired; the remaining two-thirds employed fixed 7-category scales whose intervals ranged from +3 to −3 or from 1 to 7. The open-ended scale increased the frequency of use of the “average” category and produced greater variability of judgment of the end stimuli but not of the middle ones in comparison with the fixed scales. However, the stimulus center of the “average” category was not affected by the nature of the scale.
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