Likert Scale

A widely used five-point scale for measuring attitudes. Developed in 1932 by psychologist Rensis Likert (1903–81), the scale measures individual or collective attitudes by restricting the answers on specific questions to five: strongly agree, agree, no opinion, disagree or strongly disagree. The answers are scored, respectively, from five to one, thus allowing an individual’s or a group’s average score to reflect overall attitude about a particular subject. The Likert Scale is used both by teachers to measure student attitudes and by school administrators to measure teacher attitudes.