The Witness Credibility Scale

Originally published by Douglas Keene .

It’s hard to believe we have not blogged about this scale before, but as it happens, we’ve discussed several research articles where the scale was used but never actually described the scale itself. The Witness Credibility Scale was developed by Stan Brodsky and his then-students at the University of Alabama. If you don’t recognize his name, trust us on this one: the fact that this scale was developed by Stan Brodsky makes it worth careful consideration.

Prior to the development of this scale, there was not a published measure to assess witness credibility. Based on clues found in the existing literature, the Brodsky team hypothesized that credibility was made up of 4 separate factors: likability, believability, trustworthiness, and intelligence. They constructed a 41-item scale to measure these ideas with 264 undergraduates (average age 19 years, 68.3% women, 83.3% White, 12% Black, 3.2% Latin-American, and 1.5% “other”) and ended up with four factors labeled just a little differently: knowledge, likability, trustworthiness, and confidence. Ultimately, the final scale listed 20 adjectives that observers rate to describe how much that attribute is possessed by the witness. Combining the four factors results in a numerical rating of credibility.

The measure has been used in a variety of studies (although most have stemmed from Brodsky’s lab). It is seen as a useful tool in assessing witness credibility. Here is a sample of items from the scale itself (taken directly from the article cited below). As you can see, the various descriptive adjectives are coded on a 10-point Likert Scale.

While this is not a measure you could use during trial, you could use it in pretrial research to assess your witnesses and prepare them for depositions and trial. And by testing excerpts from the depositions of opposition witnesses, you can also anticipate how well they might be received. This scale represents research you can use to improve your witnesses’ behavior and to understand where to intervene as you prepare the witness(es) for trial.

Brodsky SL, Griffin MP, & Cramer RJ (2010). The Witness Credibility Scale: an outcome measure for expert witness research. Behavioral sciences & the law, 28 (6), 892-907 PMID: 20077497

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