Scaling describes the procedures of assigning numbers to various
degrees of opinion, attitude and other concepts. This can be done in two ways
viz.,
(i) making a judgement about some characteristic of an individual
and then placing him directly on a scale that has been defined in terms of that
characteristic and
(ii) constructing questionnaires in such a way that the score of
individual’s responses assigns him a place on a scale. It may be stated here
that a scale is a continuum, consisting of the highest point (in terms of some
characteristic e.g., preference, favourableness, etc.) and the lowest point along with several intermediate points between these two
extreme points. These scale-point positions are so related to each other that
when the first point happens to be the highest point, the second point
indicates a higher degree in terms of a given characteristic as compared to the
third point and the third point indicates a higher degree as compared to the
fourth and so on. Numbers for measuring the distinctions of degree in the
attitudes/opinions are, thus, assigned to individuals corresponding to their
scale-positions.
All this is better understood when we talk about scaling technique(s).
Hence the term ‘scaling’ is applied to the procedures for attempting to
determine quantitative measures of subjective abstract concepts.
Scaling has been defined as a “procedure for the assignment of
numbers (or other symbols) to a property of objects in order to impart some of
the characteristics of numbers to the properties in question.”
Scaling is a technique used for measuring qualitative responses
of respondents such as those related to their feelings, perception, likes,
dislikes, interests and preferences. An attitude is a person's feeling toward
and evaluation of some object or event.
Measurement Scales
Scaling is the measurement of a variable in such a way that it can
be expressed on a continuum. Rating your preference for a product from 1 to 10
is an example of a scale.
Concept: A researcher has to know what to measure before
knowing how to measure something. The problem definition process should suggest
the concepts that must be measured.
A concept can be thought of as a generalized idea that
represents something of meaning. Concepts such as age, sex, education, and
number of children are relatively concrete properties. They present few
problems in either definition or measurement.
Other concepts are more abstract. Concepts such as loyalty,
personality, channel power, trust, corporate culture, customer satisfaction,
value, and so on are more difficult to both define and measure. For
example, loyalty has been measured as a combination of customer share
(the relative proportion of a person’s purchases going to one competing
brand/store) and commitment (the degree to which a customer will
sacrifice to do business with a brand/store).Thus, we can see that
loyalty consists of two components, the first is behavioral and the second is attitudinal.
There are four types of measuring scales:
1. Nominal Scale
2. Ordinal Scale
3. Interval Scale
4. Ratio Scale
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 -
What is your gender?
[ ] Male
[ ] Female
Another example is - a survey of retail stores done on two
dimensions - way of maintaining stocks and daily turnover.
How do you stock items at present?
[ ] By product category
[ ] At a centralized store
[ ] Department wise
[ ] Single warehouse
Daily turnover of consumer is?
[ ] Between 100 – 200
[ ] Between 200 – 300
[ ] Above 300
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.
Example: Rank the following attributes (1 - 5), on their
importance in a microwave oven.
1. Company Name
2. Functions
3. Price
4. Comfort
5. Design
The most important attribute is ranked 1 by the respondents and
the least important is ranked 5. Instead of numbers, letters or symbols too can
be used to rate in a ordinal scale. Such scale makes no attempt to measure the
degree of favourability of different rankings.
Example 2 - If there are 4 different types of fertilizers
and if they are ordered on the basis of quality as Grade A, Grade B, Grade C, Grade D is again an Ordinal Scale.
Example 3 - If there are 5 different brands of Talcum
Powder and if a respondent ranks them based on say, “Freshness” into Rank 1
having maximum Freshness Rank 2 the second maximum Freshness, and so on, an
Ordinal Scale results.
Median and mode are meaningful for ordinal 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. A very good
example of Interval Scale is a Thermometer.
Example - How do you rate your present refrigerator for the following
qualities.
Company Name Less Known 1 2 3 4 5 Well Known
Functions Few 1 2 3 4 5 Many
Price Low 1 2 3 4 5 High
Design Poor 1 2 3 4 5 Good
Overall Satisfaction Very Dis- Satisfied1
2 3 4 5 Very Satisfied
Such a scale permits the researcher to say that position 5 on the
scale is above position 4 and also the distance from 5 to 4 is same as distance
from 4 to 3. Such a scale however does not permit conclusion that position 4 is
twice as strong as position 2 because no zero position has been established.
The data obtained from the Interval Scale can be used to calculate the Mean scores of each attributes over all respondents.
The Standard Deviation (a measure of dispersion) can also be calculated.
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. Quantified
responses forming a ratio scale analytically are the most versatile. Ratio scale
possess all the characteristics of an internal scale, and the ratios of the
numbers on these scales have meaningful interpretations. Data on certain
demographic or descriptive attributes, if they are obtained through open-ended questions, will have ratio-scale properties. Consider
the following questions :
Q 1) What is your annual income before taxes? ______ $ / Rs
Q 2) How far is the Theater from your home ? ______ miles / kms
Answers to these questions have a natural, unambiguous starting
point, namely zero. Since starting point is not chosen arbitrarily, computing
and interpreting ratio makes sense. For example we can say that a respondent
with an annual income of $ 40,000 earns twice as much as one with an annual income
of $ 20,000.
ATTITUDE MEASURING SCALES
Attitude is a resultant of number of external and internal factors. Depending upon the attitude to be measured, appropriate scales are designed.
Attitudes have two important aspects: Direction (positive/negative, for or against) and Intensity (strength of feeling). For example, you might like horses - thus, your attitude towards horses has a positive direction.
Every attitude has three components that are represented in what is called the ABC model of attitudes: A for affective, B for behavioral, and C for cognitive.
The affective component refers to the emotional reaction one has toward an attitude object. For example, 'I feel scared when I think about or see a snake.'
Various methods of attitude measuring scales
Attitude is a group of opinions, values and dispositions to act
associated with a particular object or concept. Measuring attitude in your
survey can be difficult because it requires a series of questions to evaluate
it effectively. An attitude scale is
designed to provide a valid, or accurate, measure of an individual's
social attitude
Here are some examples of subjects that an attitude survey might
attempt to measure.
Attitude on
Choice of smart phone
Attitude on
customer service
Attitude on
use of software
Various methods of attitude measurements are:
1. 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.
5 Strongly agree
4 Agree
3 Indifferent
2 Disagree
1 Strongly disagree
Each degree of agreement is given a numerical score and the
respondents total score is computed by summing these scores. This total score
of respondent reveals the particular opinion of a person. Likert Scale are of
ordinal type, they enable one to rank attitudes, but not to measure the difference
between attitudes. They take about the same amount of efforts to create as
Thurston scale and are considered more discriminating and reliable because of
the larger range of responses typically given in Likert scale.
A typical Likert scale has 20 - 30 statements. While designing a
good Likert Scale, first a large pool of statements relevant to the measurement
of attitude has to be generated and then from the pool statements, the
statements which are vague and non-discriminating have to be eliminated. Thus,
likert scale is a five point scale ranging from ’strongly agreement’ to
’strongly disagreement’. No judging gap is involved in this method.
2. Semantic Differential Scale
This is a seven point scale and the end points of the scale are
associated with bipolar labels.
1Unpleasant Submissive 2 3 4 5 6 7 Pleasant Dominant
Suppose we want to know personality of a particular person. We
have options
i.Unpleasant/Submissive
ii. 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.
Profile Analysis
---------------/---------------
----------/--------------------
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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.
3. Stapel’s Scale
It was developed by Jan Stapel. This scale has some distinctive
features:-
Each item has only one word/phrase indicating the dimension it
represents.
i. Each item has ten response categories.
ii. Each item has an even number of categories.
iii. The response categories have numerical labels but no verbal
labels.
For example, in the following items, suppose for quality of ice
cream, we ask respondents to rank from +5 to -5. Select a plus number for words
which best describe the ice cream accurately. Select a minus number for words you think do not describe the ice cream quality
accurately. Thus, we can select any number from +5,for words we think are very
accurate, to -5,for words we think are very inaccurate.
This scale is usually presented vertically.
+5
+4
+3
+2
+1
High Quality
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
4. The Constant Sum Scale:
The constant sum scale requires the respondent to divide a
constant sum, generally 10 or 100, among two or more objects or attributes on
order to reflect the respondent’s relative preference for each object, the
importance of the attribute, or the degree to which an object contains each
attribute.
Divide 100 points among the characteristics listed so that the
division will reflect how important each characteristic is to your selection of
a new automobile.
Price ____
Economy ____
Dependability ____
Safety ____
Comfort ____
Style ____
Total 100
5. Guttman Scales/Scalogram Analysis
A Guttman scale presents a number of items to which the person is requested
to agree or not agree. This is typically done in a 'Yes/No' dichotomous format.
It is also possible to use a Likert scale, although this is less commonly used.
Questions in a Guttman scale gradually increase in specificity.
The intent of the scale is that the person will agree with all statements up to
a point and then will stop agreeing.
The scale may be used to determine how extreme a view is, with
successive statements showing increasingly extremist positions.
If needed, the escalation can be concealed by using intermediate
questions.
Example
Place a check-mark against all statements` with which you agree
I like eating out [ ]
I like going to restaurants [ ]
I like going to themed restaurants [ ]
I like going to Chinese restaurants [ ]
I like going to Beijing-style Chinese restaurants [ ]
