RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

TYPES OF QUESTIONNAIRE ITEMS 327
Very little/a little/somewhat/a lot/a very great deal
Never/almost never/sometimes/often/very often
Not at all important/unimportant/neither important
nor unimportant/important/very important
Very true of me/a little bit true of me/don’t know/not
really true of me/very untrue of me
Strongly agree/agree/uncertain/disagree/strongly
agree
To these could be added the category ‘don’t know’
or ‘have no opinion’. Rating scales are widely used
in research, and rightly so, for they combine the
opportunity for a flexible response with the ability
to determine frequencies, correlations and other
forms of quantitative analysis. They afford the
researcher the freedom to fuse measurement with
opinion, quantity and quality.
Though rating scales are powerful and useful
in research, the investigator, nevertheless, needs
to be aware of their limitations. For example,
the researcher may infer a degree of sensitivity and
subtlety from the data that they cannot bear. There
are other cautionary factors about rating scales, be
they Likert scales or semantic differential scales:
There is no assumption of equal intervals
between the categories, hence a rating of 4
indicates neither that it is twice as powerful
as 2 nor that it is twice as strongly felt; one
cannot infer that the intensity of feeling in
the Likert scale between ‘strongly agree’ and
‘disagree’ somehow matches the intensity of
feeling between ‘strongly disagree’ and ‘agree’.
These are illegitimate inferences. The problem
of equal intervals has been addressed in
Thurstone scales (Thurstone and Chave 1929;
Oppenheim 1992: 190–5).
We have no check on whether respondents
are telling the truth. Some may be deliberately
falsifying their replies.
We have no way of knowing if the respondent
might have wished to add any other comments
about the issue under investigation. It might
have been the case that there was something
far more pressing about the issue than the rating
scale included but which was condemned
to silence for want of a category. A straightforward
way to circumvent this issue is to run
apilotandalsotoincludeacategoryentitled
‘other (please state)’.
Most of us would not wish to be called extremists;
we often prefer to appear like each other
in many respects. For rating scales this means
that we might wish to avoid the two extreme
poles at each end of the continuum of the
rating scales, reducing the number of positions
in the scales to a choice of three (in a 5-point
scale). That means that in fact there could be
very little choice for us. The way round this
is to create a larger scale than a 5-point scale,
for example a 7-point scale. To go beyond a
7-point scale is to invite a degree of detail and
precision which might be inappropriate for the
item in question, particularly if the argument
set out above is accepted, that one respondent’s
scale point 3 might be another’s scale point 4.
There is a tendency for participants to opt for
the mid-point of a 5-point or 7-point scale (the
central tendency). This is notably an issue in
East Asian respondents, where the ‘doctrine of
the mean’ is advocated in Confucian culture.
One option to overcome this is to use an even
number scaling system, as there is no midpoint.
On the other hand, it could be argued
that if respondents wish to sit on the fence and
choose a mid-point, then they should be given
the option to do so.
On the scales so far there have been midpoints;
on the 5-point scale it is category 3,
and on the 7-point scale it is category 4. The
use of an odd number of points on a scale
enables this to occur. However, choosing an
even number of scale points, for example a
6-point scale, might require adecisiononrating
to be indicated.
For example, suppose a new staffing structure has
been introduced into a school and the headteacher
is seeking some guidance on its effectiveness. A
6-point rating scale might ask respondents to
indicate their response to the statement:
The new staffing structure in the school has enabled
teamwork to be managed within a clear model of line
management.
Chapter 15