Are MIS research instruments stable? An exploratory reconsideration of the computer playfulness scale

Computer systems have changed significantly in the past decades and this means that MIS research instruments developed when surveying users of legacy systems could be out-of-date. However, these instruments are often considered stable. We undertook an empirical exploratory investigation of the unidimensionality of the computer playfulness scale because several academics had reported inconsistent item loadings that they could not explain. As a result of our investigation, we concluded that the original computer playfulness construct consists of two correlated but distinct factors when administered to today’s IS users. Negatively worded items had no impact on the properties of the scale. Temporal structural stability was hypothesized as an explanation of the observed shift in this construct’s psychometric properties. # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.