Which of the following scales used to assess attitudes generally uses a seven point scale and lists of bipolar options such as 'strong' or 'weak'?
Attitude scales
An attitudes is a person's feeling and thoughts towards something. Attitudes have a direction (positive or negative) and an intensity. Numerous methods have been devised to measure attitudes. You should have some knowledge of the following attitude scales.
Thurstone scale
To create a Thurstone scale, first you start with creating a list of statements relating to a concept or issue. Each statement is then assessed by a panel of judges and given a score regarding how negative or positive the statement is regarding the issue.
Individuals are then given the statements and asked to answer whether they agree or disagree with each statement.
A person who disagrees with all the items has a score of zero. So, the advantage of this scale is that it is an interval measurement scale.
Likert Scale
Here, respondents are asked to indicate a degree of agreement or disagreement with each of a series of statements. Each scale item has 5 response categories ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree.
Semantic Differential Scale
This is a seven point scale and the end points of the scale are associated with bipolar labels.
For example one might wish to compare a group of individuals by an aspect of their personality such as dominant or submissive (bipolar labels).
Each individual could have any score from 1 (submissive) to 7 (dominant) with a score of 3-4 being neutral.
