Dear colleagues,
Likert scale is widely used in medical and social sciences, it usually gives participants five responses, 1: Strongly Disagree, 2: Disagree, 3: Neutral, 4: Agree, 5: Strongly Agree. how should neutral responses be understood and what should be entered to SPSS data sheet? in more simple words, to determine the percentage of agreement or disagreement with certain item, are all Neutral response will be omitted?
Thank You
Hi Izzeddin A. Bdair,
Questions similar to this has been addressed and you may like to read the following two:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_the_neutral_and_undecided_options_given_in_a_likert-type_scale_different
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Using_a_likert_scale_how_can_I_deal_with_the_neutral_part_of_responses
Hope it helps
Regards
I think this neutral response evaluation depends upon, what are your objectives and how do you analyze the data e.g. if you are evaluating a lecturer's capability of using multimedia presentation and giving answers a value from 20 to 100 for each category from strongly disagree to Strongly agree (which is usual method of analysis in some institutions) then neutral response becomes important. Hence neutral response can not be ignored in this situation, however it will depend upon the nature of question and the possibility of answers different for different research.
Thank you Prof. Muhammad for your valuable answer.
I do agree, but what really made me little bit confused is that neutral will be fluctuation from one item to another in the same instrument.
For example, I measure some barriers for certain behavior,
Item: "No enough time", those who respond with neutral, I think they mean Yes (Agree) to some extent that tight time is a barrier. However, it might mean that participant does not agree nor disagree, according to second scenario (in this example), what shall I consider Neutral response.
Usually the scoring weights are as you described and neutral gets a 3 scoring weight meaning more than disagreement but less than agreement.
If you are concerned that neutral does not represent an intermediary answer between disagreement and agreement, then you could treat those as missing but then you have the problem of how to treat those missing responses. It's probably easier to just treat the middle response as a middle response.
I didn't understand your comment "neutral will be fluctuation from one item to another in the same instrument". If you score neutral as a 3, it will be a 3 for each item of the scale. In fact, if some items are reversed-scored, it will still be a 3.
Thank you Alan Mead
But, If a participant partly agree or partly disagree almost will check the Neutral option and what I found that most participant answered Neutral and I feel little bit confused how to treat them and to calculate the agreement and disagreement percentage.
While, if Likert scale is 6 points, the three agreement options (Strongly agree 6; Agree 5, and 4 partly agree) will be considered as agreement and the three disagreement responses (1: Strongly Disagree, 2: Disagree, 3: Partly disagree) will be considered as disagreement.
Actually, fluctuation means if participant partly agree with the item, will check Neutral and if participant partly disagree will check Neutral too.
I think Neutral response should be dealt separately. It may denote a special sub-population. If it is calculated as (3) the usual assignment, I think it is misleading specifically when using means and other quantitative cancellations. 3 compared to 5 (Strongly agree) is 60%. Is neutrality equals 60% of disagreeing? in sum, it is fine to report Neutrality in percentages (%) not in means and its derivatives.
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