Likert scale

n. Psychometric scale utilizing an item format that requires respondents to indicate their level of agreement with a list of statements. Often used in questionnaires, attitude measures, and personality tests, Likert scales provide a measure of the degree to which individuals endorse various ideas, positions, and attitudes. Likert scales can be created either to allow for a neutral answer or to force respondents to make a positive or negative response. For example, respondents may be asked to indicate their level of agreement with the statement "I am confident in novel situations." Using a traditional 5-point Likert scale, respondents may be asked to respond as "strongly agree," "somewhat agree," "neither agree nor disagree," "somewhat disagree," or "strongly disagree." The middle point allows for a neutral response to this statement. In contrast, if researchers want to create a forced-choice measure, a 6-point Likert scale can be utilized that requires respondents to select from "strongly agree," "moderately agree," "mildly agree," "mildly disagree," "moderately disagree," or "strongly disagree." Likert scales provide ordinal data that allows for the comparison of the relative endorsement of various attitudes but does not allow for more complex quantitative calculations that require equal intervals or an absolute zero. Likert scales may be subjected to factor analysis to determine statistical clustering of related items, attitudes, and values.

- BJM