Using Learning by Doing to Teach the Development of a Likert Scale for Measuring Attitude

Abstract

Knowing how to create Likert scales in quantitative research is almost a necessity. This vignette presents an activity to help students learn how to develop an attitude scale using Likert’s method, attitude being a key concept in psychology and related fields. Inspired by various learning theories and principles (e.g., andragogy, guided practice), this activity provides a hands-on project that mimics the real-world process of developing an attitude scale. Guided by the teacher, the students choose and define an attitude object, generate an item pool, review the items and determine which ones to keep for the scale, administer the scale to a sample of participants, and evaluate the reliability of the scale using the collected data. This activity helps students put theory into practice.

Keywords

• theory of attitudes
• likert scale
• test theory