Barratt Impulsiveness Scale

The Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS) is one of the oldest and most widely used measures of impulsive personality traits.

History
The Barratt Impulsiveness Scale is the most widely used self-report measure of impulsive personality traits. As of June 2008, ISI Web of Knowledge tallied 457 journal citations of the 1995 article which defined the factor structure of the 11th version of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale. Although initially developed in the United States of America, the BIS-11 has been applied widely around the world, including citations from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada , China , Estonia , France , Germany , Greece , Israel , Italy , Japan , Korea , Netherlands , Scotland , Spain , Switzerland , Taiwan , Turkey and United Kingdom. The BIS-11 includes 30 items which may be scored to yield six first-order (attention, motor, self-control, cognitive complexity, perseverance, and cognitive instability impulsiveness) and three second-order factors (attentional, motor, and non-planning impulsiveness.

Time line:

1959 BIS-1

1995 BIS-11

Scoring
The BIS-11 is a 30-item self-report questionnaire, that is scored to yield a total score, three second-order factors, and six first-order factors. The questions are published in the 1995 references article. The following is a list of the items contributing to each factor score.

Second-order Factors         Item Content

Attentional:    6, 5, 9*, 11, 20, 24, 26, 28

Motor:          2, 3, 4, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 30*

Nonplanning:    1*, 7*, 8*, 10*, 12*, 13*, 14, 15*, 18, 27, 29*

First-order Factors         Item Content

Attention:                 5, 9*, 11, 20, 28

Motor:                     2, 3, 4, 17, 19, 22, 25

Self-Control:              1*, 7*, 8*, 12*, 13*, 14

Cognitive Complexity:      10*, 15*, 18, 27, 29*

Perseverance:              16, 21, 23, 30*

Cognitive Instability:     6, 24, 26

Items are scored 1, 2, 3, or 4 and summed within factor


 * indicates reversed items, which are scored 4, 3, 2, 1

Validity
Patton et al. (1995) report internal consistency coefficients for the BIS-11 total score that range from 0.79 to 0.83 for separate populations of under-graduates, substance-abuse patients, general psychiatric patients, and prison inmates.