Likert scales Technique

BRM- Likert Scale Technique 1

Introduction
• It is a psychometric scale commonly involved in research that employs
questionnaires.
• Researchers often use this psychometric scale to understand the views and
perspectives towards a brand, product, or target market.
• It is the most widely used approach to scaling responses in survey research.
• Likert scales are a non-comparative scaling technique and are one-dimensional
in nature.
• When responding to a Likert questionnaire item respondents specify their level of
agreement or disagreement on a symmetric agree-disagree scale for a series of
statements.
• Thus, the range captures the intensity of their feelings for a given item, while the
results of analysis of multiple items reveals a pattern that has scaled properties of
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• Likert item is considered symmetric or balanced because there are equal
amounts of positive and negative positions.
• Often five ordered response levels are used, although many psychometricians
advocate using seven or nine level, a recent empirical study found that a 5 or 7
point scale
• The format of a typical five-level Likert item:  1. Strongly disagree 2. Disagree 3.
Neither agree nor disagree 4. Agree 5. Strongly agree
• Dr. Rensis Likert (1903 - 1981) The original idea for the likert scale is found in
Rensis Likert’s 1932 article in Archive of psychology titled “ A technique for the
measurement of Attitudes”. This idea was expanded by Likert’s 1934 Journal of
social psychology article titled “ A simple and Reliable method of scoring the
Thurstone Attitude Scales”.
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Advantages
•  Likert Scale questions use psychometric testing to measure beliefs, attitudes and
opinion.
• Working with quantitative data, it is easy to draw conclusions, reports, results and
graphs from the responses.
• Likert Scale questions use a scale, & people are not forced to express an either-or
opinion, rather it allows them to be neutral.
• It is very easy and quick type of survey and it can be sent out through all modes
of communication, including even text messages.

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Limitations
1.They are uni-dimensional, because they only give a certain amount of choices.
2.Previous questions will have influenced responses to any further questions that
have been asked.
3.Participants may not be completely honest - which may be intentional or
unintentional.
4.Participants may base answers on feelings toward surveyor or subject.
5.Scale requires a great deal of decision- making.
6.They can take a long time to analyze the data

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Analysis Methods
Depending on how the Likert scale questions are treated a number of different
analysis methods can be applied
Analysis methods used for individual questions (ordinal data)
• Bar charts and dot plots • Not histograms (data is not continuous)
• Central tendency summarised by median and mode • Not mean
• Variability summarised by range and interquartile range • Not standard
deviation
• Analysed using non-parametric tests (difference between the medians of
comparable groups)
• Mann- whitney U test
• Wilcoxon signed –rank test
• Kruskal – wallis test
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When multiple Likert question responses are summed together (interval data)
• All questions must use the same Likert scale
• Must be a defendable approximation to an interval scale (i.e. coding indicates
magnitude of difference between items but there is no absolute zero point)
• All items measure are single latent variable (i.e. a variable that is not directly
observed, but rather inferred from other variables that are observed and directly
measured)
• Analyzed using parametric tests • Analysis of variance (ANOVA)
Analysis methods used when reduced to nominal level of agree vs. disagree
• Chi –square test
• Cochran Q test
• McNemar test
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Example

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THANK YOU

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