Towards more reliable survey items: An item-level stability protocol

Tourism researchers rely heavily on self-report data. The validity of their insights depends on reliability of measures, yet conventional test–retest reliability (1) overlooks item-level stability by relying on aggregate scale coefficients that can mask unstable questions; and (2) ignores how response options affect stability. We introduce the Item-Level Stability Protocol, which evaluates item-level test–retest reliability across answer options. We demonstrate its value using two-wave longitudi