Assessing decision-making style in French-speaking populations: Translation and validation of the general decision-making style questionnaire

Introduction. - Individual differences in decision-making are a fundamental component of our understanding of the decision-making process. Scott and Bruce (1995) developed the General Decision-Making Style (GDMS) questionnaire to assess five decision-making styles: rational, intuitive, dependent, avoidant, and spontaneous. Objective. - The purpose of our study was to translate and validate the GDMS into French. This measure has been used frequently to assess decision-making style since its creation. Yet, the scale is currently unavailable in French despite being already available in Slovak, Italian, and Swedish. Method. - Following best practices for scale translation (e.g., Vallerand, 1989), the original version of the GDMS was administered to a group of 345 English-speaking participants and the translated version of the questionnaire was administered to a group of 325 French-speaking participants. Results. - The properties of the translated questionnaire were then compared to those of the original questionnaire. Results of item-level, scale-level and measurement invariance analyses demonstrate that the translated measure, the Echelle des styles decisionnels, is a valid and reliable assessment of decision making style in French-speaking populations. Conclusion. - This measure already exists in languages that are much less commonly spoken than French. The newly translated Echelle des styles decisionnels will now allow researchers to validly assess decision-making style in French-speaking populations, thereby greatly increasing the ability to assess cross-cultural stability of decision-making theories. (C) 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.