The Likert Scale for Measuring Attitudes

Paper Summary:

This paper outlines the steps involved in constructing a Likert (1932) scale to evaluate university students' attitude towards vivisection and addresses issues both within the scale itself and in the broader context of all measurements of attitude. Ultimately, it questions the usefulness of attitude scales in light of their unavoidable limitations given the complexity of the hypothetical construct they seek to evaluate.

From the Paper:

"Reliability interacts with validity and where reliability is high ("equal to or more than .80" - Oppenheim, B, 1988), as with the Likert scale, validity will tend to be also, but its fundamental shortcoming, which it shares with other attitude scales, is that construct validity of the attitude concept itself is questionable. No external factual criterion exists against which declared attitudes may be defined and calibrated: for example, group membership or voting habits - seemingly objective measures - may be mediated by situational or pragmatic factors (Oppenheim, 1966). Declared attitude, as measured by self-report rating scales, may not wholly - or at all - correspond to the attitude held and thus it follows that predictive validity also tends to be poor."

More papers on The Likert Scale for Measuring Attitudes:

• Essay # 96075 : "Psychologist Rensis Likert"
• Analytical Essay # 115340 : "Standardized Testing for Measuring Academic Success"
• Term Paper # 113035 : "The Braden Scale"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: