Response categories may be used differently as a result of ethnic background or country of residence (e.g. Baumgartner and Steenkamp, 2001; Chen, Lee, and Stevenson, 1995; ter Hofstede, Steenkamp, and Wedel, 1999). Many researchers believe that respondents from some countries/ethnicities are less likely to use extreme response categories while those from other countries are more likely to use them. When making comparisons between countries/ethnicities, we need to ensure that we do not confound country/ethnicity with other factors and before we can attribute differences due to culture and not to other factors, such as scale polarity (bipolar vs. unipolar) and extent of verbal labeling of response categories. In this study, we present 3 web-based survey experiments, 2 from the U.S. and 1 international where we compared scale variants (e.g. unipolar versus bipolar) and extent of semantic anchoring (fully anchored scales give a semantic label for each response; end anchored scales provide only the extremes of the scale), and order of responses in how they affect differences in conclusions and can relate to differences between countries. 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/ethnicities. Across the experiments, there were mean differences in the evaluations of the issues as a function of country/ethnicity. However, controlling for familiarity with the topic and demographic factors, we found that these differences between groups and countries was eliminated or reduced for most of the activities we examined. We found significant differences in response patterns (extreme versus middling response patterns) as a result of type of scale – especially for end-anchored scales, regardless of scale polarity.