You used a validated scale, so you think the citation is done. You put the author and year in the sentence, added the reference, moved on. Then a reviewer writes: "Please report the reliability of this measure in your sample" or "Which version of the instrument was used?" and you're back in the methods section a week before the revision is due.
Most of those comments are avoidable. A scale citation does five jobs, and the in-text parenthetical only does one of them.
1. Cite the original validation paper
Cite the paper that developed and validated the scale, not a paper that happened to use it, and not a review that mentions it. If a later paper revised the scale, cite the version you actually administered.
The reliable way to find it is to start from the scale's developer, not from a search for "[scale name] questionnaire." Many scales have several papers with similar titles, and the wrong one is easy to pick up from a reference list you copied. Check the reference resolves by its DOI before it goes in your bibliography. A DOI that lands on the paper you meant is the cheapest verification there is.
2. State the version, the item count, and the response anchors
This is the sentence people skip, and it's the one that makes your study reproducible. Say:
- How many items you administered (the full scale, or a shortened form?)
- The subscales, if there are any, and how many items each has
- The response format: a 5-point agreement scale and a 7-point likelihood scale are different instruments even when the items match, so name the anchors ("from strongly disagree to strongly agree")
- Any change you made: reworded items, a changed referent, a translation. If you changed it, it's an adapted version, and you should say that plainly
Take the Technology Acceptance Model as an example. It has two subscales, Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use, with six items each, scored on a 7-point likelihood scale. "We measured technology acceptance using the TAM (Davis, 1989)" leaves all of that out. The version with the details reads like this:
Technology acceptance was measured with the 12-item Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989), comprising six Perceived Usefulness and six Perceived Ease of Use items rated on a 7-point scale from extremely unlikely to extremely likely. Items referred to [the system participants evaluated].
The bracket matters. TAM's items are written about "the system" in the abstract, so your methods section has to say which system your participants were thinking of.
3. Report reliability for your sample, not just the original
The validation paper reports a reliability figure for its sample. That tells the reader the scale can work. It doesn't tell them it worked for yours. Compute Cronbach's alpha (or omega, if your field prefers it) on your own data and report it, per subscale where the scale has them.
It's fine, and useful, to give the original figure as context. Label which is which:
Internal consistency in the current sample was α = .__ (Perceived Usefulness) and α = .__ (Perceived Ease of Use). Davis (1989) reported α = .98 and .94 respectively for the six-item scales.
What you shouldn't do is copy the original alphas into your results as if you measured them. Reviewers spot it, and it's a quiet way to misreport your own data.
4. Say what you know about permission to use it
This is the part with the most variation, and the one students find out about late. Scales fall into roughly three groups:
- Public domain: free to use and adapt. Cite the original.
- Free for research use: no licence fee for non-commercial academic work. Cite the original.
- Licensed: you need the copyright holder's permission before using it, and you should say you obtained it.
Don't assume a scale is free because you found the items on a website. Check the developer's page or the original publication for reuse terms. If you can't establish the status, ask the developer before you collect data. The answer decides whether you can use the scale at all.
For a licensed instrument, a short line is enough: "The [scale] was used with permission from [copyright holder]."
5. Give the scoring rule
Say how you turned items into a score: mean or sum, which items are reverse-keyed, and what a higher score means. "Higher scores indicate greater perceived usefulness" is one sentence and removes a whole class of reviewer question.
The checklist
Before you submit, a scale in your methods section should answer:
- Which paper validated it, and does your reference resolve by DOI?
- How many items, which subscales, and which response anchors?
- Did you change anything?
- What was reliability in your sample?
- Were you permitted to use it?
- How is it scored?
If you can answer all six from your own methods paragraph, you've told the reviewer what they were going to ask.
Where Folio fits
Folio's scales library lists validated scales with their source citation, reuse status and scoring information on one page, so you're not assembling it from three tabs. The TAM page is an example. Where Folio hasn't verified a scale's reuse terms, the page says so rather than implying it's free, and you should check with the developer. When you need the reference formatted, the citation tool resolves a DOI against CrossRef and OpenAlex and formats it in your style.
Whatever you use, the checklist above is the part that gets your methods section through review.
Reference: Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319–340. https://doi.org/10.2307/249008