Scale library · Technology & information systems
Perceived interactivity scale: Liu (2003)
Liu (2003) developed this scale to measure how interactive users perceive a website to be. It has three dimensions: active control (users choose what they see), two-way communication (the site listens and takes feedback) and synchronicity (the site responds quickly, without delay). Later studies reused all 15 items to evaluate health websites, such as Jawad et al. (2022) and Pereira et al. (2025). It suits theses on e-commerce websites, banking apps, admissions sites, brand pages and online learning platforms, usually as an antecedent of satisfaction, trust or revisit intention.
Cite the original, not the blog.
- Model or scale: Perceived interactivity scale
- Constructs: 3
- Items: 15 (4 reverse-coded)
Original English items
Items marked (R) are reverse-coded: recode them before computing reliability or scale scores. Replace bracketed placeholders such as [system] with the name of the system, brand or organization you study.
Active Control (AC, 4 items)
| Code | Item wording | Reverse-coded |
|---|---|---|
| AC1 | I felt that I had a lot of control over my visiting experiences at this website. | No |
| AC2 | While I was on the website, I could choose freely what I wanted to see. | No |
| AC3 (R) | While surfing the website, I had absolutely no control over what I can do on the site. | Yes |
| AC4 | While surfing the website, my actions decided the kind of experiences I got. | No |
Two-way Communication (TWC, 6 items)
| Code | Item wording | Reverse-coded |
|---|---|---|
| TWC1 | The website is effective in gathering visitors’ feedback. | No |
| TWC2 | This website facilitates two-way communication between the visitors and the site. | No |
| TWC3 (R) | It is difficult to offer feedback to the website. | Yes |
| TWC4 | The website makes me feel it wants to listen to its visitors. | No |
| TWC5 (R) | The website does not at all encourage visitors to talk back. | Yes |
| TWC6 | The website gives visitors the opportunity to talk back. | No |
Synchronicity (SYN, 5 items)
| Code | Item wording | Reverse-coded |
|---|---|---|
| SYN1 | The website processed my input very quickly. | No |
| SYN2 | Getting information from the website is very fast. | No |
| SYN3 | I was able to obtain the information I want without any delay. | No |
| SYN4 | When I clicked on the links, I felt I was getting instantaneous information. | No |
| SYN5 (R) | The website was very slow in responding to my requests. | Yes |
Response scale
5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree … 5 = Strongly agree), as Pereira et al. (2025) used it. Many other studies use a 7-point agreement scale.
Recoding reverse-coded items: 1–5 scale: new score = 1 + 5 − score = 6 − score; 1–7 scale: new score = 1 + 7 − score = 8 − score.
Licence and permission
The items are published in an academic article and reproduced verbatim in open-access articles; we found no specific terms of use from the author. Cite Liu (2003) and the article you took the wording from.
Sources (APA 7)
- Henseler, J., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2015). A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural equation modeling. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(1), 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-014-0403-8
- Jawad, D., Cheng, H., Wen, L. M., Rissel, C., Baur, L., Mihrshahi, S., & Taki, S. (2022). Interactivity, quality, and content of websites promoting health behaviors during infancy: 6-year update of the systematic assessment. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24(10), e38641. https://doi.org/10.2196/38641
- Kock, N., & Hadaya, P. (2018). Minimum sample size estimation in PLS-SEM: The inverse square root and gamma-exponential methods. Information Systems Journal, 28(1), 227–261. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12131
- Liu, Y. (2003). Developing a scale to measure the interactivity of websites. Journal of Advertising Research, 43(2), 207–216. https://doi.org/10.2501/JAR-43-2-207-216
- Pereira, E. L., Strayer, T. E., Harden, S. M., Glasgow, R. E., Studts, C., Estabrooks, P. A., & Huebschmann, A. G. (2025). Improving the usability of online resources to support implementation research and practice: The RE-AIM website use case. Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, 9(1), e146. https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2025.10070
Vietnamese translation
A Vietnamese translation of every item, with sample-size advice and studies that used the scale, is on the Vietnamese page for this scale.