Design of Paper-Based Visual Analogue Scale Items

Paper-based visual analogue scale (VAS) items were developed 100 years ago. Although they gained great popularity in clinical and medical research for assessing pain, they have been scarcely applied in other areas of psychological research for several decades. However, since the beginning of digitization, VAS have attracted growing interest among researchers for carrying out computerized and paper-based data assessments. In the present study, we investigated the research question “Which different design characteristics of paper-based VAS items are preferred by women and men?” Based on a sample of 115 participants (68 female), our results revealed that the respondents preferred a paper-based VAS item with a horizontal, 8-cm long, 3 DTP (“desktop publishing point”) wide, black line, with flat line endpoints, and the ascending numerical anchors “0” and “10”, both for women and men. Although we did not identify any gender difference in these characteristics, our findings uncovered clear preferences on how to design paper-based VAS items.