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Likert scaling is one of the most fundamental and frequently used assessment strategies in social science research (Joshi et al. 2015). A social psychologist, Rensis Likert (1932), developed the Likert scale to measure attitudes. Although attitudes and opinions had been popular research topics in the social sciences, the measurement of these concepts was not established until this time. In a groundbreaking study, Likert (1932) introduced this new approach of measuring attitudes toward internationalism with a 5-point scale – (1) strongly approve, (2) approve, (3) undecided, (4) disapprove, and (5) strongly disapprove. For example, one of nine internationalism scale items measured attitudes toward statements like, “All men who have the opportunity should enlist in the Citizen’s Military Training Camps.” Based on the survey of 100 male students from one university, Likert showed the sound psychometric properties (i.e., validity and...
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Yamashita, T., Millar, R.J. (2021). Likert Scale. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M.E. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22009-9_559
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