Lickert Scale

A way of generating a quantitative value (numerical) to a qualitative questionnaire (e.g. poor, fair, good, very good, excellent). Sometimes used on end of course evaluation. (smile sheets) For an ascending five point scale incremental values are assigned to each category and a mean figure for all the responses is calculated. (via the sum of the products of the categories' assigned value times the number of respondents for that category, divided by the total number of respondents) Example: Total number of respondents=25, assigned values are; poor=1, fair=2, good=3, very good=4, excellent=5; respondents selecting following categories are; good=9, very good=10, excellent=6. The quantitative mean = ((9*3)+(10*4)+(6*5))/25=3.9