DOSPERT Scale

Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) Scale is a psychometric scale that assesses general and domain-specific dimensions of risk preference: financial decisions (separately for investing versus gambling), health/safety, recreational, ethical, and social decisions. Respondents rate the likelihood that they would engage in domain-specific risky activities.

Please feel free to use this scale with their appropriate citations. The citation for a specific scale can be located within the documents linked below. Additionally, for use of any of the translations of the DOSPERT scale, please make sure to cite the appropriate paper from below.

Revised and Improved 30-Item DOSPERT Scale (2006)

Please note that the 30-item remains the same.

Blais, A.-R., & Weber, E. U. (2006) A Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale for adult populations. Judgment and Decision Making, 1, 33-47.


Previous DOSPERT Scale (no longer recommended)

Previous DOSPERT Scale assessed risk-taking only in five content domains: financial decisions (separately for investing versus gambling), health/safety, recreational, ethical, and social decisions. In the previous version, respondents answered in two parts: In Part I, they rated the likelihood that they would engage in domain-specific risky activities (i.e., risk-taking subscale). Additionally, Part II assessed respondents’ perceptions of the magnitude of the risks (risk-perception subscale) and expected benefits of the activities (judged in Part I). This allowed for the assessment of a domain-general risk-attitude. 

Original 40-Item DOSPERT Scale (2002)

Weber, E. U., Blais, A.-R., & Betz, N. (2002). A domain-specific risk-attitude scale: Measuring risk perceptions and risk behaviors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 15, 263-290.

Revised and Improved 30-Item DOSPERT Scale (2006)

To generate a short version of the scale with items that would be interpretable by a wider range of respondents in different cultures, the 40 items of the original scale (Weber, Blais, & Betz, 2002) were reduced to 30 items.

Blais, A.-R., & Weber, E. U. (2006) A Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale for adult populations. Judgment and Decision Making, 1, 33-47.