Uses and abuses of the likert scale: bibliometric study in the proceedings of enanpad from 2010 to 2015

Fabio Antonialli (), Luiz Marcelo Antonialli () and Renan Antonialli
Additional contact information
Fabio Antonialli: LGI - Laboratoire Génie Industriel - EA 2606 - CentraleSupélec, UFLA - Universidade Federal de Lavras = Federal University of Lavras
Luiz Marcelo Antonialli: UFLA - Universidade Federal de Lavras = Federal University of Lavras

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This paper aimed at verifying if the original assumptions of the Likert scale were or were not considered in the articles published in the EnANPAD proceedings from 2010 to 2015. This is a quantitative, exploratory and bibliometric research with data processed on Microsoft Excel and SPSS, using frequency distribution and arithmetic means. The research corpus derived from a search in the congress proceedings by using the Likert denomination when it was included in the papers abstract, methodology and/or results. From the 5342 articles published in the period, 742 (13.89%) mentioned such denomination. To verify if the scale's original assumptions were considered, it was tried to identify the following keywords: "sum"; "summation" or "indirect scale". The results showed that in 728 articles (98.1%), the Likert scale original assumptions were not considered, and most of the authors justified that they had been using a Likert-type scale. It must be emphasized that there are important differences between the (original) Likert and Likert-type scales, however, it was verified that its use in the analyzed sample was most of times erroneous. This reality shows that, although very popular, it is necessary an elucidation on the original assumptions of the Likert scale to the Brazilian academy, in order to avoid future misconceptions in its use.

Keywords: Likert scale; Likert-type; Interval; Summation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-10-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in REUNA, 2017, ⟨10.21714/2179-8834/2017v22n4p1-19⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02276290

DOI: 10.21714/2179-8834/2017v22n4p1-19

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().