The document discusses several types of attitude scales used to measure opinions and attitudes, including Likert scales, Thurstone scales, Guttman scales, and semantic differential scales. Likert scales use numbered responses to statements to assess level of agreement. Thurstone scales use judges to rate statements and select a set with the least inconsistencies. Guttman scales sum the values of statements a respondent agrees with. Semantic differential scales use bipolar adjective pairs to rate concepts on dimensions of evaluation, potency, and activity.
2. Attitude scales
An attitude: is a person’s opinion, feeling toward and
evaluation of some object or event. Attitude can be positive
or negative.
A SCALE is a continuum from highest to lowest points and
has intermediate points in between these two extremities.
Attitude scales designed to measure people’s opinions on
social issues.
3. Likert, is extremely popular for measuring attitudes, because it is simple to administer.
With the likert scale, the respondents indicate their own attitudes by checking how
strongly they agree or disagree with carefully worded statements that range from very
positive to very negative towards the attitudinal object.
Respondents generally choose from five alternatives (strongly agree, agree, neither
agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree.)
Numeric values are assigned to each category for the purpose of analysis, For example,
the value 1 is assigned to “Strongly disagree”, 5 is assigned to “strongly agree”.
4.
5. Is also known as equal appearing interval scales.
It is used to measure the attitude towards a given concept .
For this purpose a large number of statements are collected that relate to the
concept being measured. The judges rate these statements along an 11 category
scale in which each category expresses a different degree of favourableness
towards the concept. The items are then ranked according to the median ratings
assigned by the judges.
6. The statements are worded in such a way so that a person can agree or
disagree with them. The scale is then administered to assemble of
respondents whose scores are determined by computing the median
value of the items agreed with.
7.
8. Also known as Cumulative scaling, meaning that the researcher is concerned
with respondents’ total score, not just their responses to single statements.
It can predict item responses from total score.
9. Determine the focus: what concept are you going to measure?
Ask a group of people to write down different statements about this
concept.
Get a set of judges to score the statements with a Yes or No, depending
on whether they agree or disagree with them.
Draw up a table with the respondent in rows and statements in columns,
showing whether they answered Yes or No.
10. Sort the columns so the statement with the most Yes's is on the left.
Sort the rows so the respondent with the most Yes's is at the top.
Select a set of questions that have the least set of 'holes' (No's between 'Yes's).
Ask the respondents to check with which item they agree. Each scale item has
a scale value associated with it.
To calculate the respondent’s scale score, the scale values of every items they
agree with, are summed.
11.
12. Semantic differential is a type of a rating scale designed to measure the
attitude of a respondent towards objects, events, and concepts.
Semantic Differential Scale often asks people to rate a product, company
or brand upon seven-point rating scale that has opposite adjectives at
each end.
unlike the Likert scale, only the extreme opposites are listed for the
Semantic Differential scale.
13. Semantic differential scale
The idea of semantic differential indicates that the meaning of any concepts
could be described well by rating the concept on these three dimensions:
Evaluation e.g., “good – bad”
Potency e.g., “hard – soft”
Activity e.g., “fast - slow”
14. Semantic differential scale
Semantic differential scale has three elements
Concept: to be evaluated which must be relevant to the research problem
Polar adjective pairs: which fully represent the three factors (evaluation,
potency and activity)
A serious of undefined scale positions: which isn’t less than 5 or more than 9,
with 7 steps as the optimal number in the experience of Osgood.
