However, in modern times, one of the most common measurement methods is the self-report Likert scale ( Baumeister et al., 2007 Clark and Watson, 2019). Psychological data are diverse and range from observations of behavior to face-to-face interviews. This paper is intended to be a resource for psychological researchers to be informed about more recent psychometric progress in Likert scale creation. The Supplementary Material provides further technical details on these advances and offers guidance on software implementation. We supplemented this review with an in-depth discussion of five particular advances: (1) conceptions of construct validity, (2) creating better construct definitions, (3) readability tests for generating items, (4) alternative measures of precision, and (5) ant colony optimization (ACO) for creating short forms. We reviewed six major measurement journals (e.g., Psychological Methods, Educational, and Psychological Measurement) between the years 1995–2019 and identified key advances, ultimately including 40 papers and offering written summaries of each.

To address this, this current paper offers a selective review of advances in Likert scale development that have occurred over the past 25 years. However, it is hard for psychologists to remain apprised of best practices as methodological developments accumulate. Use question logic so that only those who are unhappy skip to a question asking for improvement suggestions.Developing self-report Likert scales is an essential part of modern psychology. For example, let’s say you want to ask how much your patron enjoyed your restaurant, but you only want more details if they were unhappy with something.

Keep it logical. Add skip logic to save your survey takers some time.

If a question asks how quick your waiter was and the answers range from “extremely quick” to “moderately quick,” respondents who think the waiter was slow won’t know what answer to choose.

Keep it inclusive. Scales should span the entire range of responses.

This can be tricky when using word labels instead of numbers, so make sure you know what your words mean.

Keep it continuous. Response options in a scale should be equally spaced from each other.

Our methodologists recommend five scale points for a unipolar scale, and seven scale points if you need to use a bipolar scale. If you provide more than seven response choices, people are likely to start picking an answer randomly, which can make your data meaningless. How many options should you give people? Respondents have difficulty defining their point of view on a scale greater than seven. Keep it odd. Scales with an odd number of values will have a midpoint.Keep it labeled. Numbered scales that only use numbers instead of words as response options may give survey respondents trouble, since they might not know which end of the range is positive or negative.

Creating a likert scale online