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Dr. John Nadeau: Nipissing University, School of Business and Economics, NorthBay, Ontario, Canada P1B 8L7. Email: <johnn@nipissingu.ca>

Received 17 April 2009; accepted for publication 28 April 2009.

doi:10.1016/j.annals.2009.04.004

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 738–742, 20090160-7383/$ - see front matter � 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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738 Rejoinder and commentary / Annals of Tourism Research 36 (2009) 735–742

Printed in Great Brit

Issues in Formative Measurement

Response to Murphy (2009)

Maria AlvarezGulden Asugman

Bogazici University, Turkey

Although the distinction between formative and reflective measures dates backto more than 20 years (Fornell and Bookstein 1982), articles that discuss formativemeasures and attempt to provide guidelines to researchers are relatively recent.Significant contributions on the topic made by Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer(2001), who attempt to provide certain guidelines on the development of forma-tive measures, and Jarvis, MacKenzie, and Podsakoff (2003), who examine thedifference between formative and reflective constructs and provide various rulesto distinguish between them, marked the critical importance of the issue. Despitethese efforts, it has been remarked that there is a need for further development informative measure conceptualizations and procedures (Diamantopoulos, Riefler,and Roth 2008; Howell, Breivik, and Wilcox 2007; Wilcox, Howell, and Breivik2008).

Rejoinder and commentary / Annals of Tourism Research 36 (2009) 735–742 739

In this sense, the research note ‘‘Rigor in Research: Formative and ReflectiveConstructs’’ (Murphy 2009) draws the attention of tourism researchers to the dis-tinction between formative and reflective measurement models, and emphasizesthe importance of developing research designs that provide better guidelinesfor the development and validation of formative measures. In doing so, however,the author adopts a rigid point of view and bases his conclusions on limited infor-mation, especially when he refers to the study of Alvarez and Asugman (2006).Therefore, the aim of the present research note is to respond to the points raisedabout our original article and to identify some issues that should be addressed infuture research to advance the topic of formative measurement models.

Regarding the comments made on our original article, what we believe has beenoverlooked by this author is the objective of our study. A close examination of Alva-rez and Asugman (2006) will reveal that the main focus was to distinguish travelersaccording to their perceptions of the usefulness of various information sources.Thus, a cluster analysis is used and as a result two clusters of travelers who viewinformation sources differently are obtained. To increase the practical usefulnessof this distinction, we further sought to describe these two clusters with the use ofseveral behavioral variables. These variables, including exploratory tourism behav-ior, were determined as a result of a qualitative study. Due to the lack of appropri-ate scales in the literature to reflect the behaviors identified by the qualitativestudy participants, the authors attempted to capture a comprehensive scale thatwould reflect these. Therefore, the statement ‘‘their study sought a scale tomeasure . . .’’ (p. 3) may be misleading for those readers who did not access theoriginal article, where it is emphasized that qualitative study results guided theformation of the measures.

Further, the results of our qualitative study showed that individuals differ withrespect to travel attitude regarding planning beforehand, the collection of infor-mation for exploring, and variety in the destination. These activities and behaviorsobtained from the results of our qualitative study have been included in the ques-tionnaire of our quantitative study. It was after the exploratory factor analysis thatfour dimensions were identified, according to the item loadings in the various fac-tors, and these were labeled with appropriate titles. This explains why the tentativedimensions that were formed as a result of the qualitative study differ from thosethat resulted from the exploratory factor analysis results that summarize the fac-tors.

From a theoretical perspective, an examination of the exploratory tourismbehavior construct according to the criteria proposed in the literature (Bollenand Lennox 1991; Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer 2001; Jarvis et al 2003) sug-gests that this is a second-order formative measure, a conclusion with which Mur-phy (2009) also agrees. What he further proposes regarding the nature of our firstorder constructs, however, may be questioned. He states that no reliability test orconfirmatory factor analysis are provided on our first order constructs that makeup the second order formative construct of exploratory tourism behavior. How-ever, based on related literature (e.g., Zuckerman 1979; Steenkamp and Baumgart-ner 1992) we believe that further analysis is necessary to decide on the reflective orformative nature of the first order constructs. As mentioned at the beginning ofour note, such detailed examination and measure validation, although criticallyimportant, was beyond the scope of our original study.

The hybrid formative/reflective nature of constructs is a topic that has not beenadequately examined in the literature. Although Jarvis et al (2003) identifies fourdifferent types of constructs according to their first and second order formative/reflective nature, this article does not sufficiently delve into the possibility thatsome constructs may be hybrid at the first order level and formative at the secondorder. Other authors have also acknowledged the possible hybrid nature of con-structs, especially psychological ones, which might include a ‘‘mixture of effect

740 Rejoinder and commentary / Annals of Tourism Research 36 (2009) 735–742

and causal indicators’’ (Wilcox et al 2008). This is a topic that needs to be dis-cussed further if researchers are to accurately portray the nature of their constructsand develop adequate measures to capture them.

Furthermore, in many instances, the reflective or formative nature of the con-structs may not be understood a priori. For example, in our study, the measureof exploratory tourism behavior was derived from a literature review, qualitative re-search and pilot study, and the formative nature of the scale was deduced after anexamination a posteriori. This leads to Murphy’s (2009) criticism and statementthat ‘‘the development and validity of the formative index seem inadequate asthe authors drew on Churchill’s (1979) guidelines for developing reflectivescales’’. Even after analyzing the data, it may be difficult to categorize the conceptsaccording to their reflective or formative nature. As Murphy (2009) rightly indi-cates ‘‘specifying a construct as reflective or formative depends on the contextand can be difficult’’. Furthermore, in Jarvis et al’s (2003) study of formative versusreflective constructs, the authors had trouble classifying some of the constructs,while some of them had both reflective and formative characteristics (Jarvis et al2003; Murphy 2009). The distinction between formative and reflective constructsis also questioned by some researchers who state that ‘‘constructs are not inher-ently reflective or formative and the items themselves do not always provide guid-ance as to which model to choose’’ (Wilcox et al 2008:1221). Therefore, on apractical level, it is difficult for researchers to decide a priori on which set of guide-lines to apply to develop measures, whether Churchill’s (1979) rules for reflectivemeasures or those of Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer (2001) for formative mea-sures. The need to decide a priori on the guidelines to use for measure develop-ment on a measure that may then be identified as formative has also been facedby other researchers. For example, Gruen, Osmonbekov, and Czaplewski (2006)and Kandemir, Yaprak, and Cavusgil (2006) provide examples of measures thathave been developed using Churchill’s (1979) guidelines, but which have beenestablished as formative in nature.

These considerations indicate that the development and validation of formativeor hybrid (reflective/formative) measures is still an emerging area of research withmuch need for development. Most articles on the topic are relatively recent andthere is still no consensus established in relation to many aspects. Even, the termi-nology used to name formative measures is still not clear, as examples exist of arti-cles that refer to formative scales (Gruen et al 2006; Homburg and Jensen 2007;Menguc, Auh, and Shih 2007; Palmatier 2008) and those that use the term forma-tive indices (Cadogan, Souchon, and Procter 2008; Martın Ruiz, Gremler, Wash-burn, and Cepeda Carrion 2008; Reinartz, Krafft, and Hoyer 2004; Seiders, Voss,Godfrey, and Grewal 2007).

Similarly, there is still some debate about construct validation of formative mea-sures. Specifically, the question of whether structural equation modeling (SEM) isable to validate the formative nature of a measure is discussable. Being theory led,SEM has its limitations. In particular, it may determine that the model proposed isone of the models, but does not exclude other models that might equally fit thedata (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, and Black 1998). In critiquing Nadeau, Heslop,O’Reilly, and Luk’s (2008) article, Murphy (2009) indicates that Nadeau et al.’s‘‘model’s path diagrams and accompanying Lisrel statistics treat all constructs asreflective, but seven constructs seem formative.’’ This implies that even after theLisrel analysis a researcher may still not be sure whether the measures includedare reflective or formative. Jarvis et al (2003) and Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer(2001) also argue that measurement error occurs anyway (but differentially) whena formative scale is defined as reflective, or vice versa. Thus in our original article,whose aim was in no way to develop and validate a measure, but to describe the twodifferent clusters that resulted from the analysis, applying SEM to confirm the for-mative nature of the measure would not only unnecessarily lengthen the article,

Rejoinder and commentary / Annals of Tourism Research 36 (2009) 735–742 741

but may also not have been conclusive. In order to validate the formative nature ofthe scale, a more comprehensive study, such as a Monte Carlo simulation followingJarvis et al’s (2003) suggestions for achieving ‘‘identification in formative indicatormodels’’ (Jarvis et al 2003:214), would lead to more definite conclusions. This,however, was out of the scope of our article. Nevertheless, we agree that validationof formative measures, which are critical in explaining and measuring constructs,needs to be achieved, and articles that provide guidance to researchers in this areaare extremely important.

To conclude, we agree with Murphy (2009) in stating that rigor in research is crit-ical, since without valid measures it is difficult to extend the boundaries of knowl-edge. In this regard, we believe that the distinction between reflective andformative measures, and the methods to be followed in the development and valida-tion of scales and indices is an important area of study that is still in need of develop-ment. Researchers may benefit from future development in measure identificationand validation efforts regarding formative measures. Specifically, in their seminalarticles on this topic, neither Jarvis et al (2003), nor Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer(2001) include hybrid measures where second order constructs are formative andfirst order ones are composed of both formative and reflective measures.

Further research may also address the nature of constructs and validation guide-lines. Specifically, some constructs by their nature are more concrete (especiallynon-attitudinal and non-behavioral constructs) but some are more abstract.Although it could be possible for less abstract concepts to be determined as forma-tive in nature a priori, at the beginning of a study, for more abstract concepts thiscould be more difficult. As indicated by Murphy (2009) ‘‘specifying a construct asreflective or formative depends on the context and can be difficult’’. As Jarvis et al(2003) state, even after measure validation it is necessary to use conceptual inter-pretation to determine the nature of the measure.

Maria D. Alvarez: Bogazici University, Dpt. of Tourism Administration, Hisar Kam-pus, Bebek, 34342 Istanbul, Turkey. E-mail: <alvarezm@boun.edu.tr>

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Submitted 23 March 2009. Accepted 15 April 2009. Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor:Juergen Gnoth

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Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

742 Rejoinder and commentary / Annals of Tourism Research 36 (2009) 735–742