Persuasion & Attitude Assessment Scales

Attitude scales are tools in social science research used for seeing what people think, feel, or believe about stuff. In this blog for my ODU persuasion class, I'm gonna talk about two scales you will see: the Likert scale and the visually oriented scale. We'll look at some good things about them, when they work well and where they mess up. I’ll also mention two theories called Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) to help figure out how these scales do their job.

Likert Scale

The Likert scale is a usual way to check what people think or have opinions on. It’s named after some psychologist guy Rensis Likert. It has statements, and folks say how much they agree or disagree with those statements. Typically, there are five or seven choices from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree" (Likert, 1932).

Example: If we want to see how students feel about online learning, a statement might be: "I like online learning more than going to a classroom." Then the person picks from "strongly disagree" (1) to "strongly agree" (5).

Benefits of the Likert Scale: The Likert scale is easy-peasy to use; it helps collect answers fast from many folks. It gives numbers to feelings so researchers can spot trends or connections easier too.

The Likert scale is handy for measuring complicated attitudes with lots of opinions, like politics or how happy customers are. Like a business can use this scale to learn if customers enjoy their services.

Criticism of the Likert Scale: A downside is that people sometimes pick answers that don’t really match their real views. For instance, some might skip choosing extremes and stick in the middle. Also, it might not show all the details of what someone feels, and different people could see the same point on the scale differently (Joshi et al., 2015).

Visually Oriented Scale

The visually oriented scale checks meaning or feeling using pairs of opposite words like "good-bad" or "happy-sad" (Osgood et al., 1957). People rate their feelings between these two opposite words.

Example: To find out how folks feel about electric cars, we could ask them to rate on a line from "environmentally friendly" to "environmentally harmful," using seven points across.

Benefits of Visually Oriented Scale: This type helps grab onto emotions related to topics better than just plain words sometimes do. Knowing this is super useful for companies wanting insight into how people feel emotionally about stuff they make. For instance, a car brand may want to know if drivers think their cars are "reliable-unreliable" or “modern-outdated."

Criticism of Visually Oriented Scale: A big problem here is that the adjectives could confuse some people depending on what they've experienced before which causes inconsistent results. And even using pairs of opposites doesn’t always catch someone’s full attitude (Heise, 1970).

Analyzing Scales with ELM and TRA

The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) give us insights into how well these scales measure what’s going on in people's minds.

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM): ELM says folks process messages either carefully thinking through them or just noticing simple clues (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). How much someone cares matters too that means their involvement changes how they take in info.

For highly involved individuals who put thought into it… When think lots about something, Likert scale can be good because it makes people think about each saying a lot. But other visual scale might help more for folks who don’t care much and just go with feelings instead of really thinking hard.

Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA): TRA says what someone does is based on how they feel about doing it and what they think others want them to do (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Likert scale is nice for looking at thoughts behind an action. Like if wanting to know how people feel about recycling, could use lines like "Recycling helps earth" to see if they plan to recycle or not.

Visual scale shows the feelings side of actions. If we ask folks to rate "recycling" from "super important" to "not at all," we see how they feel about it, which also changes if they will recycle or not.

Thinking About This

From this look, I learned both Likert and visual scales have good and bad parts. Likert is neat for clear thoughts and beliefs from people, while visual scale catches emotional aspects of how people think. Knowing these differences is key to pick the right one when needed.

Elaboration Likelihood Model and Theory of Reasoned Action gives good clues on how people react to tools that measure attitudes. How much someone cares about a topic matters a lot in picking which scale works best. In future, I will remember the setup and type of feeling being checked when choosing an attitude scale, whether for study or real-world stuff like ads or surveys.

All in all, knowing these scales and their tie to persuasion ideas helps me understand better how attitudes get made, seen, and changed. This information will be super helpful down the line, especially in making ways to talk clearly and understand the public better.

References

Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (1975). Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior: An introduction to theory and research. Addison-Wesley.

Heise, D. R. (1970). The semantic differential and attitude research. In G. F. Summers (Ed.), Attitude measurement (pp. 235-253). Rand McNally.

Joshi, A., Kale, S., Chandel, S., & Pal, D. K. (2015). Likert scale: Explored and explained. British Journal of Applied Science & Technology, 7(4), 396-403.

Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes. Archives of Psychology, 22(140), 1-55.

Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J., & Tannenbaum, P. H. (1957). The measurement of meaning. University of Illinois Press.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. Springer-Verlag.