Descriptive and Inferential Analysis of Likert Scale

Descriptive and Inferential Analysis of
Likert Scale
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1. Likert data can be analyzed by comprehending the measurement scale represented by it.
Generally, any numeric figure associated with a Likert data define a “less than” or “greater
than” type of ordinal relation, however, lesser or greater amounts are not explicitly
mentioned. Therefore, the three descriptive statistics suggested for measure of central
tendency are median or mode, whereas frequencies for measure of deviation Again, Likert
scale data is an interval measurement scale evaluated from the compound score from the
Likert data by considering their average or sum. Descriptive statistics include mean for
central tendency and standard deviation for measure of dispersion. The reason behind
choosing median or mode, whereas frequencies as the three statistics for describing the
shape of the data due to the ordinal nature of Likert data. Statistics like mean and standard
deviation would give inappropriate and unclear meaning in describing the data, especially if
there is clustering of responses at a particular option in the data (Sullivan, & Artino Jr,
2013).
For example, opinions about effectiveness of an on-field industrial training are collected
on a five point Likert scale with five options ranging from “highly effective” to “highly
ineffective”. Now, if mean and standard deviation are used to understand the shape of the
data then average of the scores from “highly effective” and “effective” would provide
useless information. In this case, frequencies for each response, and the median/mode for the
distribution would help in describing the location of the peak and the variability. In case of
clustering of responses, median, mode and frequencies would efficiently help in describing
the shape of the distribution (Subedi, 2016).
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