Conference presentation, 2013

1. NORMATIVE ANALYSIS AND
STATISTICAL
TREATMENT/VALIDITY OF THE
LIKERT SCALE
Peter J Stavroulakis
3RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCEON QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE METHODOLOGIES INTHE
ECONOMIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES
MAY 23-24 2013,TEI OF ATHENS,GREECE

2. What happens when we are
asked to portray our
emotions?

3. A question is posed...

4. How do you feel about
mathematics?

5. Well...let me think...
 There was this time in school, I tried to learn the
limit definition and found it too difficult to grasp
 This experience formulated my emotions
towards math and a subsequent bias...
 Math was kind of an alien topic and created a
feeling of loathing...

6. But...
 Some years after that there was this one time
that mathematics saved me...
 Etc...
 Etc...
 Etc...

7. From all our experiences we
will perform a sort of
internal appraisal...

8. ...in order to extract a
response

9. The mechanics?

10. The domain of the variable?
Plutchik (1980)

11. From a continuous variable
we extract a sample

12. Discretization

13. Classes and class marks

14. Sampling on a model

15. Processes
 Discretization
 Sampling theory
 Analog to digital conversion?
 Central LimitTheorem?

16. The Likert scale performs an
implicit discretization of
emotion

17. Implicit because it measures
intensity
 Mathematics inspire admiration

18. The Likert Scale
 Interval?
 Ordinal?

19. “The average of ‘fair’ and
‘good’ is
not‘fair‐and‐a‐half’; which
is true even when
one assigns integers to
represent ‘fair’ and
‘good’!”
Jamieson (2004)

20. But if we perform
discretization of the domain
under equal intervals does
it matter that the average
of ‘fair’ and ‘good’ is
not‘fair‐and‐a‐half’?

21. Issues
 Need to investigate the matter further from
the subjects’ perspective
 Extract a model for particular kinds of
attitude instruments
 Pair model with experimental data

22. Thank you for your
attention!