About CIFR

The Comprehensive Infrequency/Frequency Item Repository (CIFR; Kay & Saucier, 2023) is a database of 660 infrequency/frequency items. These items can be used to identify so-called careless and insufficient-effort (C/IE) responders—participants who respond in deceptive, misleading, or otherwise invalid ways to surveys.

At their most basic, infrequency items are statements that should be endorsed by almost no one (e.g., “When someone tells me a funny joke, I often feel angry”) and frequency items are statements that should be endorsed by almost everyone (e.g., “It should be illegal to intentionally kill an innocent person”). Participants are flagged as C/IE responders if they tend to agree with the infrequency items and tend to disagree with the frequency items.

The full database of CIFR items can be accessed through the CIFR portal. However, before accessing the CIFR portal, we highly recommend reading the user guide and the frequently asked questions.


Last updated: June 4th, 2023, at 10:07 AM PDT.