IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rfa/journl/v11y2023i1p32-38.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Likert Items: Should(n’t) We Really Care?

Author

Listed:
  • Raymond Doe
  • Bryan A. Landrum
  • Kaelyn M. Lewis
  • Matthew E. Glenn
  • Jacob D. Smith

Abstract

One of the controversial methodological topics in the social and behavioral sciences is the (ab)use of Likert Scale items, Likert-type items and ranked ordered response categories. The debate is whether parametric tests can be legitimately conducted on technically ordinal response categories that are represented with numbers. Participants answered survey questions on moral disengagement, where we changed the intervals of seven response categories and tested whether assigning numbers made any difference in two separate studies. The results showed that participants’ ratings were not significantly different with or without numbers. Participants tend to covertly superimpose numbers where none were provided. Also, there were no significant interactions between assignment of numbers and ‘intervalness’. However, ratings were significantly different between two key interval groups. Knowing the assumptions of respondents to these Likert items even without numbers could inform researchers especially if parametric tests are to be conducted.

Suggested Citation

  • Raymond Doe & Bryan A. Landrum & Kaelyn M. Lewis & Matthew E. Glenn & Jacob D. Smith, 2023. "Likert Items: Should(n’t) We Really Care?," International Journal of Social Science Studies, Redfame publishing, vol. 11(1), pages 32-38, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:rfa:journl:v:11:y:2023:i:1:p:32-38
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://redfame.com/journal/index.php/ijsss/article/download/5747/5940
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://redfame.com/journal/index.php/ijsss/article/view/5747
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rfa:journl:v:11:y:2023:i:1:p:32-38. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Redfame publishing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.