This document discusses several methods for measuring attitudes, including Thurstone scales, Likert scales, and Guttman scales. It provides details on how each scale is constructed and used, including collecting statements, having judges sort statements, selecting statements for the final scale, and analyzing results. The key aspects covered include: - Thurstone scales use equal intervals and judges sort statements independently - Likert scales use a symmetric agree-disagree scale for statement items - Guttman scales have a cumulative pattern where respondents who agree with later items also agree with previous items - Advantages and limitations of each approach are presented

1. Method of
Equal
Appearing
Intervals
Method of
Summated
Rating
Semantic
Differential
Scale
Bogardus
Social
Distance
Guttmann's
scale

2. Originally developed by Thurstone and Chave (1929)
The intervals into which the statements are sorted or rated
are equal sorted or rated are equal.
The attitude of the judge does not influence the sorting of
the statements into the various intervals.

3. Step -I
Collection of Statements:
A large number of statements ( about 100 to 200)
showing both favorable and unfavorable attitude in
varying degrees towards the psychological object, are
written or collected by the researcher from different
sources.

4. Criteria For Writing Statements
Edward 1957
Avoid statements that refer to the past rather than the present..
Avoid factual statements.
Avoid statements that may be interpreted in more than
one way.
Avoid statements that are irrelevant to the psychological
object under consideration.
Avoid statements that are likely to be endorsed by almost
everyone or almost no one.
Select statements that are believed to cover the entire
range of the effective scale of interest.
Keep the language of the statements simple, clear and
direct.

5. Statement should be short, rarely exceeding 20 words.
Each statement should contain only one complete
thought.
Statements containing universals such as all, always,
none or never often introduce ambiguity and should be
avoided.
Words such as only, just, merely and others and others
of a similar nature should be used with care and
moderation in writing statements.
Whenever possible, statements should be in the form of
simple sentences.
Avoid words that may not be understood by those who
are to be given the complete by scale.
Avoid the use of double negatives.

6. Step-II
Sorting Of the Statements
;
In the second step, the statements are sent to the experts or
judges for classification on an 11-point continuum,
According to favourableness or unfavourableness of each
statement towards the unfavourableness of each statement
towards researcher psychological object under study.
The researcher proceeds as follows :
Each statement is printed on separate
sheets/cards.
Each judge is then given 11 cards on which letters
A to K (or numbers 1 to 11) are written.

7. These cards/envelops are arranged before the judges in a
manner that ‘A’ is kept at the extreme left and ‘K’ is kept at the
extreme right.
Statements that seem to express the most unfavorable feelings
about the object of attitude are to be placed on the
card/envelope ‘A’.
Statements that seem to express the most favorable feelings
about the object of attitude are to be placed on the card ‘K’.
Statements that express neither favorable nor unfavorable
feelings about the object of attitude are to be placed in the
middle ‘F’ card that is described as the neutral card.
The cards lettered from ‘G’ to ‘K’ represent various degrees of
favorableness and the cards from ‘E’ to ‘A’ represent various
degrees of unfavorableness.

8. Step-III
Selection of Statement for the Final
Scale:
The next step is to determine the Scale Value and Q-value of
each statement. Thurstone and Chave used median as the
scale value to show the favourableness or unfavourableness,
and quartile deviation as the Q-value, as a measure of
variance for a given statement.
The final form of the scale is then constructed by selecting 30
to 35 statements that are most relevant, least ambiguous and
which cover or represent the different intensities of the
attitude.
They are then arranged in a random attitude.
They are then arranged in a random order.

9. Step-IV
Split-half technique is used.
Step-V
By correlating the average attitude scores with
actual behavior of the subjects.

10. Advantages:
Easy to administer
Require minimum instructions
Disadvantages:
Time consuming
Expensive to construct
Not as much diagnostic value as a Likert scale
Values depend on the attitudes of original judges

11. 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”.
 Likert-type or frequency scales use fixed choice response
formats and are designed to measure attitudes or opinions
 It is a psychometric scale commonly involved in research that
employs questionnaires.
 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.

12.  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.
I believe that ecological questions are the most important
issues facing human beings today. Strongly agree / agree /
don’t know / disagree / strongly disagree Each of the five (or
seven) responses would have a numerical value which would
be used to measure the attitude under investigation.
We can use it to get an overall measurement of a particular
topic, opinion, or experience and also collect specific data on
contributing factors.

13.  Choose a particular scale (3 point, 5 point, 7 point, etc) and
use it as your standard to cut down on potential confusion and
fatigue. This will also allow for comparisons within and
between your data sets.

14. 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.

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

16. Guttman Scalogram
It’s a cumulative scale
Respondent indicate agreement or disagreement
Individual total score is calculated by counting the no.
of items answered favorably.

17. Superior to Likert and Thurston
Is unidimensional scale
clear meaning
Advantages
Disadvantages
Analytical complexity
Difficult to find items which have a perfect
cumulative pattern.

18. References:
•Relationships between the Thurstone and Rasch approaches to item
scaling. Applied Psychological Measurement, 2, 449-460.
•Andrich, D. & Luo, G. (1993) A hyperbolic cosine model for unfolding
dichotomous single-stimulus responses. Applied Psychological Measurement,
17, 253-276.
•Babbie, E., 'The Practice of Social Research', 10th edition, Wadsworth,
Thomson Learning Inc., ISBN 0-534-62029-9
•Edwards, A. L. Techniques of attitude scale construction. New York: Appleton-
Century- Crofts, 1957.
•Guilford, J. P. Psychometric methods. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954.
•Krus, D.J., & Kennedy, P.H. (1977) Normal scaling of dominance matrices: The
domain-referenced model. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 37,
189-193
•Thurstone, L. L. (1927a) A Law of comparative judgment. Psychological
Review, 34, 273-286.