Définition Likert scale

The Likert scale is used, in a narrower sense, to detect the attitude of a respondent on a given topic. The Likert scale is named after the American psychologist Rensis Likert.

When conducting a Likert test, several statements are being phrased, on which a respondent either agrees or disagrees with the help of a scale. Likert scales usually consist of 5,7 or 11 attributes. The mean response on a scale with 7 values, 4, is representative of the answer "do not know/undecided".

The individual questions that make up a block of statements on a topic are called items.

An example:

The overall feature 'innovation' is to be tested. One of several Likert-items might look like this:

To which degree do you agree with the following statement? "I like to buy the latest tech-gadgets that have just hit the stores". The response options would be 1 = "strongly agree" to 5 = "strongly disagree".

In a broader sense, the term Likert scale is often used widely for rating scales by which respondents can express agreement or disagreement in a multi-stage interval scale.