- What is a Likert scale?
- The different types and purposes of Likert scales
- Unipolar Likert scale example
- Bipolar Likert scale example
- What are five-point and seven-point Likert scales?
- When should you use a unipolar or bipolar Likert scale in your surveys?
- How to write Likert scale questions
- How to analyze Likert scale responses
What is a Likert scale?
A Likert scale is a psychometric rating scale mostly used in feedback and questionnaires to understand the respondent’s opinion to a given set of statements. You can evaluate your respondents’ emotions and perceptions to find out what needs fixing first, identify hidden patterns behind their answers, and more.
Since it requires less effort from the survey participant, this is considered one of the most quick and efficient ways to collect feedback.
A Likert scale question gives you a simpler way to answer questions that are normally qualitative—like how people "feel" about your product or service—by assigning a numerical value so the collected responses can be easily analyzed.
The different types and purposes of Likert scales
Likert scales play a crucial role in estimating a respondent's attitude towards a certain product, service, or idea. This type of survey is often preferable because it gives a nuanced understanding of the feedback, with different degrees of opinions instead of a simple Yes/No result. You can use different types of Likert scales to measure agreement, frequency, satisfaction, importance, likelihood, quality, intensity, and more.
There are two main types of Likert scales: unipolar and bipolar. The unipolar scale measures only one quality of an attribute from one lower end to the other higher end and the bipolar scale measures two opposite qualities of the same attribute.
For example in a restaurant feedback form, the unipolar question would be to understand how much (intensity) the customer enjoyed their food and the bipolar question would be to understand whether they liked or disliked (polarity) the food. A bipolar Likert scale essentially prompts a respondent to indicate a balance between two poles, which defines the relative proportion of each one.
Unipolar Likert scale example
“How much did you enjoy the food?”
Bipolar Likert scale example
“How much did you enjoy the food?”
| Factor | Unipolar scale | Bipolar scale |
|---|---|---|
| Nature | A unipolar scale measures the intensity of one attribute. How satisfying was our service? 0% to 100% satisfaction | A bipolar Likert scale measures the opposition between two attributes Did you like our service? -3 (Hate) to +3 (Love) |
| Purpose | This captures the intensity of a single-trait. Frequency, pain, usability | This captures opposing traits. Preferences, emotions, conflicts |
| Neutrality | There is no midpoint option, and the scale starts at a zero intensity. “Not at all” to “Extremely” | There is a clear midpoint, and the scale starts at opposite extremes. "Very unhappy" to "Neutral" to "Very happy" |
| Data insights | Tracks the magnitude How much? | This reveals polarization -2 (Strongly oppose) to 0 (Neutral) to +2 (Strongly support) |
| Ease of response | Less cognitive load on the respondent because there is only one question to evaluate. | Higher load cognitive load on the respondent because they have to evaluate two opposing ideas. |
| Bias risk | The user may be prone to acquiescence bias or agreement bias to finish faster or because they are unsure. | Central tendency bias or contraction bias may cause users to avoid extremes when rating or judging. |
| When to avoid | Avoid if neutrality is a meaningful response. | Avoid if the traits aren’t true opposites. |
Beyond agreement and disagreement, you can find out the frequency, likelihood, satisfaction, importance, quality and intensity using a Likert scale. Here’s what each type of scale can help you with.
- Use an agreement scale like 'Strongly Disagree' to 'Strongly Agree' in employee engagement surveys to understand workplace culture.
- Use a frequency rating scale to track how often a customer visits your store or buys a product in your customer satisfaction surveys. You can give options ranging from "Never" to "Always".
- You can use a satisfaction Likert scale in your healthcare surveys to evaluate your patients’ contentment levels.
- Collecting Likert scale ratings for the importance of different research projects will help you focus on the topics that matter to participants in your academic research surveys.
- A likelihood scale will help you with the purchase intent of your customers in your marketing research forms.
What are five-point and seven-point Likert scales?
Likert rating scales are generally categorized into five-point or seven-point, depending upon how many options respondents can choose from.
Typically, any Likert scale includes a middle point, which is usually a moderate opinion like "Do not agree or disagree" and holds true for all Likert scale questions.
A seven-point Likert scale provides respondents seven options to choose from. It's more expansive in terms of measuring degrees or variations in this sense. This type of rating scale usually runs along the succession of -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, numerically.
If you are dealing with a construct that ranges from positive to negative—such as agreement levels—then these would work well with a 1–7 point scale that includes a neutral or middle point.
What are five-point and seven-point Likert scales?
- Use an agreement scale like 'Strongly Disagree' to 'Strongly Agree' in employee engagement surveys to understand workplace culture.
- Use a frequency rating scale to track how often a customer visits your store or buys a product in your customer satisfaction surveys. You can give options ranging from "Never" to "Always".
- You can use a satisfaction Likert scale in your healthcare surveys to evaluate your patients’ contentment levels.
- Collecting Likert scale ratings for the importance of different research projects will help you focus on the topics that matter to participants in your academic research surveys.
- A likelihood scale will help you with the purchase intent of your customers in your marketing research forms.
Learn about different question types you can use for your survey
How to write Likert scale questions
Use proper labels
While the Likert scale is essentially a rating scale question, remember to use definitive adjectives and adverbs for your labels. Without a label on it, a respondent may wonder which option is positive and which side is negative.
For example, when you ask a person to rate your service, you might just give the numbers 1 to 5 as options. While it might be obvious to you that 5 is better than 1, it is always the best practice to include a description with the numbers (or in the question) to make it obvious to the respondent.
Choosing the right adjectives
Getting accurate and helpful results from your Likert scale responses all comes down to using precise descriptions. You want to ensure that you use language that is easily understood by the respondent so there is no confusion.
The usual sequence is moving from an extreme low to the neutral to the high positive adjective scale. For example, you can start off with an adjective like "Highly unsatisfactory", and move on to the "Somewhat satisfactory", followed by "Neutral," and then move on to the positive ones, like "Mostly satisfactory" and then "Extremely satisfactory."
A pro tip here: Stay away from options like "pretty much," "quite a bit," they convey an unclear degree implication and may end up confusing respondents. The respondent may also be unsure if they are negative or positive. Instead, stick to clearly defined words like "Very," "Extremely," "Moderately," "Slightly," and "Not at all."
Employ odd-numbered scales
Whether you choose a five-point scale or a seven-point one, always try to keep the scale at odd numbers. It tends to be easier for people to choose from an odd-numbered scale.
Also, make sure there are no more than seven points on your Likert scale, otherwise the sheer volume of options can end up confusing the respondent.
Include all kinds of feedback
While deciding the labels for your Likert scale, try to pick ones that are inclusive of all possible feedback. For instance, if you are asking about the music level in your restaurant, and the only options provided are "extremely loud" and "slightly loud," the people who felt it could be turned up a little more would not know what to choose.
Always ask, never tell
Survey questions in the form of statements can confuse viewers because humans have a psychological tendency to agree rather than disagree. This is known as acquiescence bias and might end up giving you low-quality data. Always try to frame things as a question if you want to avoid unintentionally influencing respondents.
Use logic in your surveys
Survey logic means that each user can be asked specific questions based on how they answered previous questions. For example, if your respondent indicated that they liked a gadget in one of their questions, you do not have to ask them why they disliked the gadget. You can simply skip that question.
Alternatively, if they indicate that they disliked the gadget, they will still be asked "why?" by using display logic to show the question and narrow down the reasons why they were dissatisfied with it.
You can also choose to present Likert scale questions in visibly different ways: horizontally (through a matrix choice question), vertically (through a multiple choice radio button question), or even as a drop-down menu question.
What makes Likert scales so popular is that they are quick, simple, and precise. Since respondents can easily understand the intent of the scale and answer the question, it greatly reduces survey fatigue. This is great news: You can make completing surveys easier for your respondents and get bias-free responses.
How to analyze Likert scale responses
The optimal way to analyze a Likert scale is to start by looking at how many people chose each response option. This will help you understand which way your respondents are leaning. If you are using Zoho Survey, you can easily see this in the Reports section.
With Zoho Survey, you can also check if answers are spread out or clustered to understand how much people agree with each other, or you can simply combine similar responses to draw big-picture conclusions. For example, you can combine the number of people who said "Agree" and "Strongly agree" to see the overall favorability of a product or idea.
Instead of looking at plain numbers, you can use visualizations like stacked bar charts, line graphs, or pie charts. These are available in the Display Options section under Customize in the Reports section of Zoho Survey.
Apart from all of these, it is important that you watch out for people falling into the habit of avoiding stating strong opinions by always picking neutral or agreeing with everything without thinking. Focus on where most answers fall and where the biggest differences appear.
Frequently asked questions
This is a rating scale that gives its respondents five options to choose from. It can range from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” and should include a neutral response. Here's a typical
- Strongly Agree
- Agree
- Neither Agree nor Disagree
- Disagree
- Strongly Disagree
A rating scale of 1 to 10 is not always a Likert scale. Generally Likert scales measure attitudes or perceptions using ordered categories. But 1–10 scales are similar in that they provide a simple way to measure intensity on a continuous numeric range (e.g., pain or satisfaction).
A 5-point Likert scale is a way to measure opinions. People choose from five options, ranging from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree," with a neutral choice in the middle.
A 3-type Likert scale is a Likert scale with 3 options for the respondent to choose from.