How to Report TAM Results in Your Methods Section

You ran the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), you have two subscale scores, and now you need a paragraph that reports them correctly. Here's the short version.

The reliability line

TAM measures two constructs — Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) — with six items each, scored on a 7-point likelihood scale (from "extremely unlikely" to "extremely likely"). Report Cronbach's alpha for each subscale separately; they don't share one reliability figure because they're measuring different things.

Across the original validation studies (Davis, 1989), PEOU ran α = .91–.94 and PU ran α = .97. If you're reporting your own sample's reliability rather than citing the original, say so explicitly — "internal consistency in the current sample" is a different claim than "internal consistency in the original validation."

A sample paragraph

Technology acceptance was measured using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis, 1989), a 12-item instrument assessing Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) on a 7-point scale ranging from extremely unlikely to extremely likely. Subscale scores were computed as the mean of six items each, with higher scores indicating greater perceived usefulness or ease of use. In the original validation, internal consistency was high for both subscales (PU α = .97, PEOU α = .91–.94).

Adjust the last sentence to your own sample's alphas once you've calculated them — don't just cite Davis's numbers as if they were yours.

One thing to get right

TAM's items are written to reference "the system" in the abstract. Your methods section should say plainly what system your version of the items actually asked about (the software, app, or tool your participants evaluated) — a reviewer will ask if you don't.

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

Folio's TAM scale page has the full item set for both subscales and the citation pre-formatted — and if you ran the survey in Folio Surveyor, your response data and the scale's psychometric properties are already in one place.