Itemized Rating Scale

Definition: The Itemized Rating Scale is an Ordinal Scale that has a brief description or numbers associated with each category, ordered in terms of scale positions. The respondents are asked to select the category that best describes the stimulus object being rated.

The following are the most commonly used itemized rating scales:

  1. Likert Scale: A Likert Scale is a scale with five response categories that ranges from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”, wherein the respondent is asked to indicate the degree of agreement or disagreement with each of the statements related to the stimulus object under analysis.
  2. Semantic Differential Scale: The semantic differential scale is a seven-point rating scale with the extreme points having the semantic meaning. The scale is used to measure the meaning or semantics of words, especially the bi-polar adjectives (such as “evil” or “good”, “warm” or “cold”) to derive the respondent’s attitude towards the stimulus object.
  3. Stapel Scale: Stapel scale is a single adjective rating scale with 10 categories ranging from -5 to +5 with no zero points. This scale is usually a vertical scale in which the single adjective is placed in the middle of the even-numbered range (-5 to +5). The respondent is asked to identify how correctly or incorrectly each term describes the stimulus object by choosing an appropriate response category.

The itemized rating scale is widely used in marketing research and serve as a basic component of more complex scales, such as Multi-Item Scales.

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