Attitude Scale
Attitude is the mental state of an
individual which makes him to act or respond for or against objects,
situations... etc with which his/her vested feelings of interest, liking,
desire and so on.
The term scaling is applied to the
attempts to measure the attitude objectively. Attitude is a resultant of number
of external and internal factors. Depending upon the attitude to be measured,
appropriate scales are designed. Scaling is a technique used for measuring
qualitative responses of respondents such as those related to their feelings,
perception, likes, dislikes, interests and preferences.
Types of Scales
Most frequently used Scales
1. Nominal
Scale
2. Ordinal
Scale
3. Interval
Scale
4. Ratio
Scale
Self Rating Scales
1. Graphic
Rating Scale
2. Itemized
Rating Scales
a. Likert
Scale
b. Semantic
Differential Scale
c. Stapel’s
Scale
d. Multi
Dimensional Scaling
e. Thurston
Scales
f. Guttman
Scales/Scalogram Analysis
g. The
Q Sort technique
1. Nominal Scale
This is a very simple scale. It
consists of assignment of facts/choices to various alternative categories which
are usually exhaustive as well mutually exclusive. These scales are just
numerical and are the least restrictive of all the scales. Instances of Nominal
Scale are - credit card numbers, bank account numbers, employee id numbers etc.
It is simple and widely used when relationship between two variables is to be
studied. In a Nominal Scale numbers are no more than labels and are used
specifically to identify different categories of responses. Following example
illustrates
2. Ordinal Scale
Ordinal scales are the simplest
attitude measuring scale used in Marketing Research. It is more powerful than a
nominal scale in that the numbers possess the property of rank order. The
ranking of certain product attributes/benefits as deemed important by the
respondents is obtained through the scale.
3. Interval Scale
Herein the distance between the
various categories unlike in Nominal, or numbers unlike in Ordinal, are equal
in case of Interval Scales. The Interval Scales are also termed as Rating
Scales. An Interval Scale has an arbitrary Zero point with further numbers
placed at equal intervals.
4. Ratio Scale
Ratio Scales are not widely used in
Marketing Research unless a base item is made available for comparison. In the
above example of Interval scale, a score of 4 in one quality does not
necessarily mean that the respondent is twice more satisfied than the
respondent who marks 2 on the scale. A Ratio scale has a natural zero point and
further numbers are placed at equally appearing intervals. For example scales
for measuring physical quantities like - length, weight, etc.
The ratio scales are very common in
physical scenarios.
Self rating scales
1. Graphic Rating
Scale
The respondents rate the objects by
placing a mark at the appropriate position on a line that runs from one extreme
of the criterion variable to another.
This is also known as continuous
rating scale. The customer can occupy any position. Here one attribute is taken
ex-quality of any brand of ice cream.
This line can be vertical or
horizontal and scale points may be provided. No other indication is there on
the continuous scale. A range is provided. To quantify the responses to
question that “indicate your overall opinion about ice-ream Brand 2 by placing
a tick mark at appropriate position on the line”, we measure the physical
distance between the left extreme position and the response position on the
line.; the greater the distance, the more favourable is the response or
attitude towards the brand.
Its limitation is that coding and
analysis will require substantial amount of time, since we first have to
measure the physical distances on the scale for each respondent.
2. Itemized Rating
Scales
These scales are different from
continuous rating scales. They have a number of brief descriptions associated
with each category. They are widely used in Marketing Research. They
essentially take the form of the multiple category questions. The most common
are - Likert, Sementic, Staple and Multiple Dimension. Others are - Thurston and Guttman.
a. Likert Scale
It was developed Rensis Likert. Here
the respondents are asked to indicate a degree of agreement and disagreement
with each of a series of statement. Each scale item has 5 response categories
ranging from strongly agree and strongly disagree.
a. Semantic
Differential Scale
This is a seven point scale and the
end points of the scale are associated with bipolar labels.
Suppose we want to know personality
of a particular person. We have options-
a. Unpleasant/Submissive
b. Pleasant/Dominant
Bi-polar means two opposite streams.
Individual can score between 1 to 7 or -3 to 3. On the basis of these responses
profiles are made. We can analyse for two or three products and by joining
these profiles we get profile analysis. It could take any shape depending on
the number of variables.
Mean and median are used for
comparison. This scale helps to determine overall similarities and differences
among objects.
When Semantic Differential Scale is
used to develop an image profile, it provides a good basis for comparing images
of two or more items. The big advantage of this scale is its simplicity, while
producing results compared with those of the more complex scaling methods. The
method is easy and fast to administer, but it is also sensitive to small
differences in attitude, highly versatile, reliable and generally valid.
b. Stapel’s Scale
It was developed by Jan Stapel. This
scale has some distinctive features:-
a. Each
item has only one word/phrase indicating the dimension it represents.
b. Each
item has ten response categories.
c. Each
item has an even number of categories.
d. The
response categories have numerical labels but no verbal labels.
C.Multi Dimensional Scaling
2. It
consists of a group of analytical techniques which are used to study consumer
attitudes related to perceptions and preferences. It is used to study-
a. The
major attributes of a given class of products perceivedby the consumers in
considering the product and by which they compare the different ranks.
b. To
study which brand competes most directly with each other.
c. To
find out whether the consumers would like a new brand with a combination of
characteristics not found in the market.
d. What
would be the consumers ideal combination of product attributes.
e. What
sales and advertising messages are compatible with consumers brand perceptions.
It is a computer based technique. The
respondents are asked to place the various brands into different groups like
similar, very similar, not similar, and so on. A goodness of fit is traded off
on a large number of attributes. Then a lack of fit index is calculated by
computer program. The purpose is to find a reasonably small number of
dimensions which will eliminate most of the stress. After the configuration for
the consumer’s preference has been developed, the next step is to determine the
preference with regards to the product under study. These techniques attempt to
identify the product attributes that are important to consumers and to measure
their relative importance.
This scaling involves a unrealistic
assumption that a consumer who compares different brands would perceive the
differences on the basis of only one attribute.For example, what are the
attributes for joining M.Com course. The responses may be -to do PG, to go into
teaching line,to get knowledge, appearing in the NET. There are a number of
attributes, you can not base decision on one attribute only. Therefore, when
the consumers are choosing between brands, they base their decision on various
attributes. In practice, the perceptions of the consumers involve different
attributes and any one consumer perceives each brand as a composite of a number
of different attributes. This is a shortcoming of this scale.
Whenever we choose from a number of
alternatives, go for multi- dimensional scaling. There are many possible uses
of such scaling like in market segmentation, product life cycle, vendor
evaluations and advertising media selection.
The limitation of this scale is that
it is difficult to clearly define the concept of similarities and preferences.
Further the distances between the items are seen as different
f. Thurston Scales
These are also known as equal
appearing interval scales. They are used to measure the attitude towards a
given concept or construct. For this purpose a large number of statements are
collected that relate to the concept or construct being measured. The judges
rate these statements along an 11 category scale in which each category expresses
a different degree of favourableness towards the concept. The items are then
ranked according to the mean or median ratings assigned by the judges and are
used to construct questionnaire of twenty to thirty items that are chosen more
or less evenly across the range of ratings. The statements are worded in such a
way so that a person can agree or disagree with them. The scale is then
administered to assemble of respondents whose scores are determined by
computing the mean or median value of the items agreed with. A person who
disagrees with all the items has a score of zero. So, the advantage of this
scale is that it is an interval measurement scale. But it is the time consuming
method and labour intensive. They are commonly used in psychology and education
research.
g. Guttman
Scales/Scalogram Analysis
It is based on the idea that items
can be arranged along a continuem in such a way that a person who agrees with
an item or finds an item acceptable will also agree with or find acceptable all
other items expressing a less extreme position. For example - Children should
not be allowed to watch indecent programmes or government should ban these
programmes or they are not allowed to air on the television. They all are
related to one aspect.
In this scale each score represents a
unique set of responses and therefore the total score of every individual is
obtained. This scale takes a lot of time and effort in development.
They are very commonly used in
political science, anthropology, public opinion, research and psychology.
h. The Q Sort
technique
It is used to discriminate among
large number of objects quickly. It uses a rank order procedure and the objects
are sorted into piles based on similarity with respect to some criteria. The
number of objects to be sorted should be between 60-140 approximately. For
example, here we are taking nine brands. On the basis of taste we classify the
brands into tasty, moderate and non tasty.
We can classify on the basis of price
also-Low, medium, high. Then we can attain the perception of people that
whether they prefer low priced brand, high or moderate. We can classify sixty
brands or pile it into three piles. So the number of objects is to be placed in
three piles-low, medium or high.
Thus, the Q-sort technique is an attempt
to classify subjects in terms of their similarity to attribute under study.
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