Rating scales and their statistics

Written by Ronny Gunnarsson and first published on December 28, 1999.
Last revised on March 28, 2020.

There is an updated version of the EPV-calculator found here: https://infovoice.se/epv-calculator/

Suggested pre-reading	What this web page adds
Introduction to statistics Observations and variables Choosing statistical analysis	This web-page describes the use of rating scales and special considerations for choosing statistical analysis. Reading this will give you an understanding of using rating scales and how to calculate relevant statistics.

(This page was first published in Swedish 1999 and has been updated a number of times since then. An English translation is under construction and will gradually appear here.)

Table of Contents (with links)

Introduction to rating scales

Can attitudes, feelings and emotions be transformed to numbers?

You are using a specific empirical-atomistic epistemological approach labelled positivism when you measure and analyze attitudes, feelings and emotions using quantitative methods (numbers). Representatives for the human sciences raised criticism around the early 20th century towards the practice of turning subjective phenomenons like attitudes, feelings and emotions into objective numbers and statistics. They argued that research on people’s attitudes, cultural and social life works according to other principles and are not accessible using the positivistic approach. This is a debate that is still alive and it might be a good idea to be aware of this.