Measuring message credibility: Construction and validation of an exclusive scale

Despite calls to conceptualize credibility as three separate concepts-source credibility, message credibility, and media credibility-there exists no scale that exclusively measures message credibility. To address this gap, the current study constructs and validates a new scale. Results from a confirmatory factor analysis suggest that message credibility, specifically in the context of news, can be measured by asking participants to rate how well three adjectives describe content: accurate, authentic, and believable. Validity and reliability tests are reported, and contributions to credibility research are discussed.