Likertems

Likertems are a type of survey item used in questionnaires, particularly in social sciences and marketing research, to measure attitudes, opinions, or behaviors. They are named after the psychologist Rensis Likert, who developed the scale in 1932. A Likertem typically presents a statement and asks respondents to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with that statement. The response options are usually arranged along a continuum, forming an ordinal scale.

Common response options include "Strongly Disagree," "Disagree," "Neutral," "Agree," and "Strongly Agree." Other variations might include frequency (e.g., "Never" to "Always") or satisfaction levels (e.g., "Very Dissatisfied" to "Very Satisfied"). The key characteristic is the ordered nature of the response choices, allowing for the quantification of responses.

When analyzing data from Likertems, researchers can treat the responses as ordinal data, meaning the order of the categories is meaningful but the distance between them may not be equal. In some cases, for ease of statistical analysis and under certain assumptions, Likert scales are treated as interval data, allowing for the calculation of means and standard deviations. This practice, however, is debated among statisticians. Multiple Likertems combined to measure a single underlying construct form a Likert scale.