Narrative Believability Scale (NBS-12)

Narrative believability has 4 underlying dimensions.

Plausibility

• I believe this story could be true.
• This story was plausible.
• This story seems to be true.

Completeness

• It was easy to follow the story from beginning to end.
• It was hard to follow this story.^a
• If I were writing this story, I would have organized it differently.^a

Consistency

• The information presented in this story was consistent.
• All of the facts in this story agreed with each other.
• The “consistency” of a story refers to the extent to which a story does not contradict itself or contradict other things you know to be true or false. How would you rate this story in terms of “consistency”?^b

Coverage

• There was important information missing from this story.^a
• There were lots of “holes” in this story.^a
• The “coverage” of a story refers to the extent to which the story accounts for all of the information presented in the story. How would you rate this story in terms of “coverage”?^b

^aItem should be reverse-scored.

^b7-point item with anchor points 1 = Very Low, 7 = Very High.

Most items are 7-point Likert-type items with anchor points 1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree.

Citation Information:

Yale, R. N. (2013). Measuring narrative believability: Development and validation of the narrative believability scale (NBS-12). Journal of Communication, 63, 578-599.