Revisiting the Psychometric Properties of the Message Fatigue Scale: Evidence for Uni-Dimensionality and Construct Validity

Message fatigue is conceptualized as an unpleasant and aversive motivational state that results from excessive and repeated exposure to campaign messages and/or similar information over an extended period of time. There have been substantial increases in research on the role of message fatigue in health communication, the verity of which is contingent upon the robustness and validity of the construct’s operationalization. The current study identifies the issues in the extant message fatigue scale validation research and revisits the psychometric properties and factor structure of the So et al. (2017) scale. Two-wave panel data from an online survey in the context of COVID-19 and influenza vaccines were used for multilevel confirmatory factor analyses and two-level modeling for scale validation, which demonstrated strong evidence for the unidimensionality, construct validity, and reliability of the scale.