QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE MEASUREMENT
EXAMPLE BOX 5
Examples of Types of Likert Scales
THE ROSENBERG SELF-ESTEEM SCALE
All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure:
(1) Almost always true (4) Seldom true
(2) Often true (5) Never true
(3) Sometimes true
A STUDENT EVALUATION OF INSTRUCTION SCALE
Overall, I rate the quality of instruction in this course as:
Excellent Good Average Fair Poor
A MARKET RESEARCH MOUTHWASH RATING SCALE
WORK GROUP SUPERVISOR SCALE
My supervisor:
Brand
Dislike
Completely
Dislike
Somewhat
Dislike a
Little
Like a
Little
Like
Somewhat
Like
Completely
X ————— ————— ————— ————— ————— —————
Y ————— ————— ————— ————— ————— —————
Never Seldom Sometimes Often Always
Lets members know what is expected of them 1 2 3 4 5
Is friendly and approachable 1 2 3 4 5
Treats all unit members as equals 1 2 3 4 5
balanced (e.g., “strongly agree,” “agree,” “strongly
disagree,” “disagree”). Nunnally (1978:521) stated:
As the number of scale steps is increased from 2 up
through 20, the increase in reliability is very rapid
at first. It tends to level off at about 7, and after
about 11 steps, there is little gain in reliability from
increasing the number of steps.
Researchers have debated about whether to offer
a neutral category (e.g., “don’t know,” “unde-
cided,” “no opinion”) in addition to the directional
categories (e.g., “disagree,” “agree”). A neutral cat-
egory implies an odd number of categories.
We can combine several Likert scale items into
a composite index if they all measure the same con-
struct. Consider the Index of Equal Opportunity for
Women and the Self-Esteem Index created by Sni-
derman and Hagen (1985) (see Example Box 6,
Examples of Using the Likert Scale to Create In-
dexes). In the middle of large surveys, they asked
respondents three questions about the position of
women. The researchers later scored answers and
combined items into an index that ranged from 3 to
- Respondents also answered questions about
self-esteem. Notice that when scoring these items,
they scored one item (question 2) in reverse. The
reason for switching directions in this way is to
avoid the problem of the response set. The response
Response set A tendency to agree with every ques-
tion in a series rather than carefully thinking through
one’s answer to each.
