HIND COLLEGE OF NURSING

Safedabad, Barabanki
SUBJECT- NURSING EDUCATION

ASSIGNMENTS
ON
SUMMATEDSCALE

SUBMITTED TO SUBMITTED BY
MR. MUTHU KUMAR MS. SAROJ TIGGA
PROFESSOR M.Sc. NURSING 1ST YEAR
DEP. OF MENTAL HEALTH NURSING HIND COLLEGE OF NURSING
 SUMMATED SCALE
INTRODUCTION
The summated rating scale is one of the most frequently used tools in the social sciences. Its
invention is attributed to Rensis Likert (1932), who described this technique for the assessment
of attitudes. These scales are widely used across the social sciences to measure not only attitudes,
but opinions, personalities, and descriptions of people's lives and environments as well. Scales
presently exist that measure emotional states (e.g., anger, anxiety, and depression), personal
needs (e.g., achievement, autonomy, and power), personality (e.g., locus of control and
introversion), and description of jobs (e.g., role ambiguity and workload). These are but a few of
the hundreds of variables for which scales have been developed. For many variables several
scales exist, some of which were created for specialized purposes.
DEFINITION:
One of the most frequently used methods for assessment of people's characteristics, especially
attitudes, in the social sciences. Hundreds of summated rating scales have been developed Locus
of Control Scale (WLCS) The following questions concern your beliefs about jobs in general.
They do not refer only to your present job.
1 = Disagree very much 4 = Agree slightly
2 = Disagree moderately 5 = Agree moderately
3 = Disagree slightly 6 = Agree very much
As in all scaling methods, the first step is to define what it is you are trying to measure. Because
this is a unidimensional scaling method, it is assumed that the concept you want to measure is
one-dimensional in nature. You might operationalize the definition as an instruction to the people
who are going to create or generate the initial set of candidate items for your scale.
Generating the Items Next, you have to create the set of potential scale items. These should be
items that can be rated on a 1- to-5 or 1-to-7 Disagree-Agree response scale. Sometimes you can
create the items by yourself based on your intimate understanding of the subject matter. But,
more often than not, it’s helpful to engage a number of people in the item creation step. For
instance, you might use some form of brainstorming to create the items. It’s desirable to have as
large a set of potential items as possible at this stage, about 80- 100 would be best.
RATING THE ITEMS
The next step is to have a group of judges rate the items. Usually, you would use a 1-to-5 rating
scale where:
1. Strongly unfavorable to the concept
2. Somewhat unfavorable to the concept
3. Undecided
4. Somewhat favorable to the concept
5. Strongly favorable to the concept
Notice that, as in other scaling methods, the judges are not telling you what they believe – they
are urging how favorable each item is with respect to the construct of interest.
SELECTING THE ITEMS
The next step is to compute the intercorrelations between all pairs of items, based on the ratings
of the judges. In making judgements about which items to retain for the final scale there are
several analyses you can do:
Throw out any items that have a low correlation with the total (summed) score across all items.
In most statistics packages it is relatively easy to compute this type of Item-Total correlation:
 First, you create a new variable which is the sum of all of the individual items for each
respondent.
 Then, you include this variable in the correlation matrix computation (if you include it as
the lastvariable in the list, the resulting Item-Total correlations will all be the last line of
the correlation matrixand will be easy to spot).
 How low should the correlation be for you to throw out the item? There is no fixed rule
here – you might eliminate all items with a correlation with the total score less that 0.6,
for example.
 For each item, get the average rating for the top quarter of judges and the bottom quarter.
 Then, do a t-test of the differences between the mean value for the item for the top and
bottom quarter judges.
 Higher t-values mean that there is a greater difference between the highest and lowest
judges. In more practical terms, items with higher t-values are better discriminators, so
you want to keep these items.
In the end, you will have to use your judgement about which items are most sensibly retained.
You want a relatively small number of items on your final scale (e.g., 10-15) and you want them
to have high
Item-Total correlations and high discrimination (e.g., high t-values).
Administering the Scale
You’re now ready to use your Likert scale. Each respondent is asked to rate each item on some
response scale. For instance, they could rate each item on a 1-to-5 response scale where:
1. Strongly disagree
2. 2. Disagree
3. 3. Undecided
4. 4. Agree
5. 5. Strongly agree
There are variety possible response scales (1-to-7, 1-to-9, 0-to-4). All of these odd-numbered
scales have a middle value is often labeled Neutral or Undecided. It is also possible to use a
forced-choice response scale with an even number of responses and no middle neutral or
undecided choice. In this situation, the respondent is forced to decide whether they lean more
towards the agree or disagree end of the scale for each item.
The final score for the respondent on the scale is the sum of their ratings for all of the items (this
is why this is sometimes called a “summated” scale). On some scales, you will have items that
are reversed in meaning from the overall direction of the scale. These are called reversal items.
You will need to reverse the response value for each of these items before summing for the total.
That is, if the respondent gave a 1, you make it a 5; if they gave a 2 you make it a 4; 3 ⇒ 3; 4 ⇒
2; and, 5 ⇒ 1.
Example: The Employment Self Esteem Scale
Here’s an example of a ten-item Liker scale that attempts to estimate the level of self esteem a
person has on the job. Notice that this instrument has no center or neutral point – the respondent
has to declare whether he/she is in agreement or disagreement with the item.