Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?

A semantic differential scale is a survey or questionnaire rating scale that asks people to rate a product, company, brand, or any 'entity' within the frames of a multi-point rating option. These survey answering options are grammatically on opposite adjectives at each end. For example, love-hate, satisfied-unsatisfied, and likely to return-unlikely to return with intermediate options in between.

Surveys or questionnaires using the semantic differential question is the most reliable way to get information on people’s emotional attitude towards a topic of interest.

Charles Egerton Osgood, a famous American psychologist, invented the semantic differential scale so that this 'connotative meaning' of emotional attitude towards entities can be recorded and put to good use.

Osgood conducted this research on an extensive database and found that three scales were commonly useful, irrespective of race or culture or difference in language:

  • Estimate: Combination similar to good-bad.
  • Authority: Pairs on the lines of powerful-weak.
  • Activeness: Combos like active-passive.

Researchers can measure a wide variety of subjects using these combinations, like customers’ outlooks about an upcoming product launch or employee satisfaction.

What is the semantic differential scale?

The ease-of-understanding and the popularity it comes with it makes it extremely reliable. The data collection is accurate due to the versatility that these survey questions come with.

Researchers use the semantic differential scale questions to ask respondents to rate products, organization, or services with multi-point questions with polar adjectives at the extremes of this scale like likely/ unlikely, happy/sad, loved the service/ hated the service.

Semantic differential scale examples & question types

1. Slider rating scale: Questions that feature a graphical slider give the respondent a more interactive way to answer the semantic differential scale question.

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?

2. Non-slider rating scale: The non-slider question uses typical radio buttons for a more traditional survey look and feel. Respondents are more used to answering.

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?

3. Open-ended questions: These questions give the users ample freedom to express their emotions about your organization, products, or services.

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?

4. Ordering: The ordering questions offer the scope to rate the parameters that the respondents feel are best or worst according to their personal experiences.

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?

5. Satisfaction rating: The easiest and eye-catchy semantic differential scale questions are the satisfaction rating questions.

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?

Advantages of semantic differential

  • The semantic differential has outdone the other scales like the Likert scale in vitality, rationality, or authenticity.
  • It has an advantage in terms of language too. There are two polar adjectives for the factor to be measured and a scale connecting both these polar.
  • It is more advantageous than a Likert scale. The researcher declares a statement and expects respondents to either agree or disagree with that.
  • Respondents can express their opinions about the matter in hand more accurately and entirely due to the polar options provided in the semantic differential.
  • In other question types like the Likert scale, respondents have to indicate the level of agreement or disagreement with the mentioned topic. The semantic differential scale offers extremely opposite adjectives on each end of the range. The respondents can precisely explain their feedback that researchers use for making accurate judgments from the survey.
Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?
  • Researchers can gain perception of concepts, attitudes, and opinions using the verbally different terms as a measuring tool using the semantic differential scale.

Points to consider while using the semantic differential

QuestionPro provides you with the necessary resources to collect all types of various data, including the semantic differential survey feature. When seeking an alternative solution provider, though, consider the following:

A Likert scale is a rating scale that lets respondents select answers ranging across a spectrum of choices to gain deeper insight into attitudes, beliefs, or opinions. 

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?
Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?

How a Likert scale is different from a Rating Scale

A Likert scale was developed in 1932 by Rensis Likert, a psychologist, to better understand the feelings of respondents given a balanced set of choices. Likert scales are most often an odd-numbered series of options, between 5 to 7 answer choices, evenly distributed in weight and symmetry across the scale and ranging from one end of a spectrum to the other. The scale is popular in questionnaires and online surveys in collecting quantifiable data about subjects that are often difficult to analyze without observation, such as consumer attitudes, beliefs, and opinions.

Although Likert scales are rating scales, the opposite is not necessarily true. While “Likert scale” is often used interchangeably to describe a rating scale, a Likert scale is a specific type of rating scale that exclusively focuses on a range of answers on a spectrum. A rating scale can consist of any number of rating choices, such as stars or numeric responses as are used in an NPS question type.

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?
Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?
Rating questions are a family of question types that include Likert scales, numeric systems, NPS, and more.

When you should use a Likert Scale

Likert scales are a particularly useful form of rating scale that can be used when observation isn’t an option. Website and mobile surveys, customer satisfaction questionnaires, and more allow researchers to gain insights on perceptions, behaviors, feelings, and more by asking respondents to self-report their reactions based on how they feel using the Likert scale. 

Some common uses for Likert scale rating question types include:

    • Customer Satisfaction surveys
    • Investigating the likelihood of action being taken
    • Gaining insights on beliefs or perceptions surrounding a specific topic
    • How frequently an action occurs

Likert scales make it easier to quantify these kinds of insights, so they can be an asset in analyzing large quantities of data. There are many more instances in which a Likert scale can be of use, as it is one of the most popular rating scales in use today. 

How to write Likert scale questions

Likert scales offer a balance of answer choices, so the scale should be symmetrical in weight. If, for example, one end is “extremely likely” the other end should be “extremely unlikely” or “not at all likely” with a neutral choice such as “neither likely nor unlikely” as the center option.

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?
Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?
Likert scales offer a balanced scale of options.

As with any survey, it’s important to follow best practices for writing good survey questions. Likert scales follow these same basic principles. 

Keep in mind that Likert scale answer choices are ordered, and should therefore not be shuffled. To reduce bias in a Likert scale, questions should be given with “reverse order” shuffling commands to keep the scale intact. This allows varied presentation of choices to respondents but doesn’t lead to confusion or misunderstandings.

In the Pollfish platform, you can select Likert scale answer variants from the “Predefined answers” selection to choose the scale that is the best fit for your question.

Examples of Likert scale questions

Customer satisfaction surveys

Likert scales can be used in customer satisfaction surveys to determine how customers felt about their experience, a product, or service. 

Example: How happy were you with your stay at our hotel?

    • Very satisfied
    • Somewhat satisfied
    • Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
    • Somewhat dissatisfied
    • Very dissatisfied

Frequency of behaviors

If you are looking for how often a consumer purchases a product, takes an action or spends a certain amount of money, Likert scales can help uncover some of these behaviors.

Example: How often do you read articles on your phone vs in a newspaper?

    • Much more
    • Moderately more
    • About the same
    • Moderately less
    • Much less

Agreement statements

Perhaps the most popular Likert scale in survey questions is a scale of agreement-disagreement, where a respondent is asked to select the answer that best reflects their belief about a statement provided.

Example: Please select how much you agree or disagree with the following statement: Cats make better pets than dogs.

    • Strongly agree
    • Somewhat agree
    • Neither agree nor disagree
    • Somewhat disagree
    • Strongly disagree

Using a Likert scale in a matrix question type

Matrix style question types allow Likert scales to be used to ask about several different ideas at once. This can be a good option when the survey will otherwise be repetitive, measuring the same data for many similar ideas.

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?
Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series?
Likert scales are useful in matrix questions to measure scales on a similar subject matter.

Likert scales offer researchers an easy scale to measure certain opinions on topics important to their customers and consumers and provide actionable insights that can be analyzed. To make the most of Likert scales using Pollfish, consider selecting answer choices from our Predefined answer selections or use our Crosstabs feature for advanced analysis when your survey is complete. 

Frequently asked questions

What is a Likert scale?

A Likert scale is a rating scale that lets respondents select answers ranging across a spectrum of choices to gain deeper insight on attitudes, beliefs, or opinions. 

How is a Likert Scale different from a rating scale?

A Likert scale is a specific type of rating scale that exclusively focuses on a range of answers on a spectrum. A rating scale can consist of any number of rating choices, such as stars or numeric responses as are used in an NPS question type.

What are the features of a Likert scale?

Likert scales are often an odd-numbered series of options, between 5 to 7 answer choices, evenly distributed in weight and symmetry across the scale and ranging from one extreme end of a spectrum to the other.

The Likert scale is popular in questionnaires and online surveys, as it collects quantifiable data about subjects that are often difficult to analyze without observation, such as consumer attitudes, beliefs, and opinions.

What types of questions are Likert scales used in?

A Likert scale can be used for questions about customer satisfaction, frequency of behaviors, agreements questions along with matrix question types.

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude?

Semantic Differential Scales: Semantic differential scales measure respondents' attitudes about the strengths and weaknesses of a concept or construct. With this scale, researchers select a pair of dichotomous adjectives to describe the concept under investigation. Typically researchers use a scale from 1 through 7.

Which type of scale has respondents describe their attitude using a series of bipolar?

Bipolar or Seven-point Likert Scale A bipolar Likert scale essentially indicates a respondent to balance two between two poles, defining the relative proportion of both while doing so.

Which type of scale has respondents?

Itemised rating scales: With an itemised scale, respondents are provided with a scale having numbers and/or brief descriptions associated with each category and are asked to select one of the limited number of categories, ordered in terms of scale position, that best describes the product, brand, company or product ...

Which measure of attitude allows respondents to rate an object?

A typical item in a Likert scale is a statement to which respondents rate their level of agreement.