Response categories may be used differently as a result of ethnic background or country of residence. When making comparisons between countries, there are a number of factors (e.g. mode, demographics, etc.) that must be equated before we can attribute differences due to culture and not other factors. Scale polarity is one issue that can cause some differences between countries – bipolar scales may sometimes be inappropriately rendered as unipolar scales (and vice versa) in translations. In this study, we compared scale variants (e.g. unipolar versus bipolar) and extent of semantic anchoring (fully anchored versus end anchored scales) in leading to differences between countries. This experiment had 36,938 respondents from 6 different European countries complete a web-based survey on attitudes and behaviors toward different activities. Respondents were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 scale conditions to rate in terms of their liking for the activity (fully versus end anchored crossed with unipolar versus bipolar). They were first asked how many days they did a series of actions and then evaluated their attitudes toward the actions (e.g. drinking coffee, attending religious services, etc.). We found significant differences in endorsement proportions for the response categories as a function of scale type. The fully anchored unipolar scale showed a lower endorsement of the highest response categories across countries. There were mean differences in the evaluations of the issues as a function of country. However, controlling for familiarity with the topic and demographic factors, we found that these differences between countries was eliminated or reduced for most of the activities we examined. We found significant differences in response style proportions (extreme versus middling response styles) as a result of country of residence. However, response style differences between countries were more likely to occur for the end-anchored scales and not for the fully anchored scales.