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Rathus Assertiveness Inventory

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonyms

Assertiveness questionnaire; RAS; Social skills self-report measure

Definition

The Rathus assertiveness schedule (RAS) is a 30-item self-report instrument designed by Rathus (1973) to measure assertiveness. The “assertiveness” construct, at that time, was the equivalent to the construct later known as “social skills” (Caballo 1997). Some of the RAS’s items were based on social situations included in different questionnaires while some other items were suggested by diaries the author requested be kept by college students. Each item is answered from +3 “Very characteristic of me, extremely descriptive” to −3 “Very uncharacteristic of me, extremely nondescriptive,” without including 0. There are 17 items that require inverting the sign, and then the items’ scores are added up. High positive scores indicate high assertiveness while high negative scores indicate the opposite.

Psychometric Properties of the RAS

The test-retest reliability found was between .76 and .83, split-half...

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References

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Correspondence to Vicente E. Caballo .

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Caballo, V.E., Salazar, I.C. (2017). Rathus Assertiveness Inventory. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_67-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_67-1

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