The Likert Scale
Chat with our AI personalities
I think you mean a Likert scale, i.e. a scale that gives ordered responses that have no real numerical value, for example "Strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree." This is ordinal level data and is probably best displayed in a bar graph, with one bar for each possible answer.
Strongly Agree
strongly agree
An ordinal scale is a method of categorising observation according to a scheme in which there is a sense of ordering between categories but the difference between categories is variable and unspecified. For example, the scale {strongly disagree, disagree, neither disagree nor agree, agree, strongly disagree}.
An ordinal categorical variable is often used in questions for which the responses can be put into some kind of natural order but where the difference between categories is not the same. One example may be where the respondent is asked to class statements as "disagree strongly", "disagree", "neither disagree nor agree", "agree", and "agree strongly". There is a natural progression in the response but the difference between "disagree strongly" and "neither ... " [2 steps] may not be the same as that between "disagree" and "agree" [also 2 steps].The results of any analyses which attaches numerical value to the answers for processing is sensitive to the coding system used. The results with the answers coded as {1, 2, 3, 4, 5} will be quite different to those coded {1, 4, 10, 20, 25}.