A Brief Tutorial on the Development of Measures for Use in Survey Questionnaires

"Many well-conceived research studies have never seen the light of day because of flawed measures"

Guidelines for writing items:

• statements should be simple and short as possible
• language should be familiar to target respondents
• do not mix items that assess behaviors with items that assess affective responses
• leading questions should be avoided and they bias responses
• keeping a measure short is an effective means of minimizing bias caused by boredom and fatigue

Likert-type scales are the most frequently used scaling technique in survey questionnaire research and are the most useful in behavioral research

• some researchers use 7 and 9 point scales
• Likert (1932) developed the scales to be composed of the five qual appearing intervals with a neutral midpoint as we are already used to strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, strongly agree
• Coefficient alpha reliability with Likert scales has been shown to increase up to the use of five points, but then it levels off

Reporting the manner in which the items are derived is important. Our items must be clearly linked to the theoretical construct being assessed.

Hinkin, T. R. (1998). A brief tutorial on the development of measures for use in survey questionnaires.Organizational Research Methods, 1(1), 104-121. doi: 10.1177/109442819800100106