Measurement of Attitude: Scales used

 

1.     Thurston’s scaling method

The Thurstone scale measures a respondent’s attitude by using a series of “agree-disagree” statements of various weights. These statements help determine not only how a respondent feels, but how strongly they feel that way. By measuring attitude with the Thurstone scale, you can gauge the sentiment or opinion of respondents with greater accuracy.

The Thurstone scale was the first formal method of measuring attitude both in psychology and sociology, developed by psychologist Louis Leon Thurstone who began measuring religious attitudes by asking respondents to agree or disagree with a series of related statements. He understood that attitude was cumulative and that he could, therefore, calculate it as the sum total of each statement the respondent agreed with. A Thurstone scale survey is a series of related, dichotomous (forked) statements. For example,

I am inspired to meet my goals at work.

Agree                                      Disagree

I feel completely involved in my work.

Agree                                      Disagree

I am often so involved in my work that the day goes by quickly.

Agree                                      Disagree

Thurstone scale is used to measure and compare your respondents’ attitudes on a particular issue. You can apply the Thurstone scale to a wide range of surveys, including:

i.                 Those that measure opinions. The Thurstone scale produces quantifiable measures of the strength of your respondents’ opinions.

ii.               Those that gauge sentiment, including customer satisfaction and employee engagement. For customers, the scale can help you predict things like repeat purchases; for employees, it can be future turnover.

The Thurstone scale can be developed by following these 4 simple steps:

1.     Identify a research question related to attitude. Narrow the focus to a single, unidirectional issue.

2.     Generate a series of agree-disagree statements about the subject that support the issue to varying degrees. The more statements you come up with, the more useful your data will be.

3.     Assign each statement a score of 1 to 11 based on how strong you believe the statement is. A higher score indicates a more supportive position, while a lower score indicates a more neutral position. You can score the questions yourself, but the risk of bias is lower if you get consensus from a study group.

4.     If you’re working in a study group, have each member score how strong they believe the statements are. Find the median score given to each question and then order your questions in ascending order, with the questions with the lowest medians at the top.

Interpretation of the result: Simply assign each “agree” answer a score of 1 to 11—depending on the score above—and each “no” or “disagree” answer a score of 0. The final score of each graded quiz represents the respondent’s strength of opinion, where a higher score indicates a more supportive opinion.

There are statistical limitations to the Thurstone scale. Because the relative weight of each statement is based on the assumptions of an individual or group of individuals, the mathematical differences between statements aren’t always accurate. Nevertheless, the Thurstone scale is an excellent way to evaluate and compare attitudes with a measure of objectivity.

 

2.     Likert scaling method

 

A Likert scale is a rating scale used to measure opinions, attitudes, or behaviors. It was developed by an American social psychologist Rensis Likert. This scale consists of a statement or a question, followed by a series of five or seven answer statements. Respondents choose the option that best corresponds with how they feel about the statement or question. Because respondents are presented with a range of possible answers- 5 or 7, Likert scales are great for capturing the level of agreement/ disagreement or their feelings regarding the topic in a more nuanced way. For example,

I believe that ecological questions are the most important issues facing human beings today.

Most agree                  Agree              Neutral                        Disagree                      Most disagree

A Likert scale assumes that the strength/intensity of an attitude is linear, i.e., on a continuum from strongly agree to strongly disagree, and makes the assumption that attitudes can be measured. For example, each of the five (or seven) responses would have a numerical value that would be used to measure the attitude under investigation. In addition to measuring statements of agreement, Likert scales can measure other variations such as frequency, quality, importance, likelihood, etc.

The response categories in the Likert scales have a rank order, but the intervals between values cannot be presumed equal. Therefore, the mean (and standard deviation) is inappropriate for ordinal data, instead median or mode is used to calculate results.

Strengths:

1.  Likert Scales have the advantage that they do not expect a simple yes / no answer from the respondent but rather allow for degrees of opinion and even no opinion at all.

2. Quantitative data is obtained, which means that the data can be analyzed relatively easily.

3. Offering anonymity on self-administered questionnaires should further reduce social pressure and thus may likewise reduce social desirability bias.

Limitations:

1.  Like all surveys, the validity of the Likert scale attitude measurement can be compromised due to social desirability. This means that individuals may lie to put themselves in a positive light. For example, if a Likert scale was measuring discrimination, who would admit to being racist?

2. Likert scales are prone to response bias, where respondents either agree or disagree with all the statements due to fatigue or social desirability or have a tendency toward extreme responding or other demand characteristics.