Scaling Technique

Dr. Yamini Vyas Pandey

 Scaling Techniques
• Comparative Scale
– Paired comparison
– Rank order
– Constant Sum
– Q-sort
• Non-comparative
– Continuous Rating scale
– Itemized rating scale
• Likert
• Semantic
• Stapel
 Comparative scales
• In comparative scaling, the respondent is
asked to compare one object with another.
• The comparative scales can further be divided
into the following four types of scaling
techniques: (a) Paired Comparison Scale, (b)
Rank Order Scale, (c) Constant Sum Scale, and
(d) Q-sort Scale
 Paired Comparison Scale:
• This is a comparative scaling technique in
which a respondent is presented with two
objects at a time and asked to select one
object according to some criterion.
• The data obtained are ordinal in nature. For
example, there are four types of cold drinks
Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, and Limca. The
respondents can prefer Pepsi to Coke or Coke
to Sprite, etc.
Brand Coke Pepsi Sprite Limca
Coke - 0
Pepsi -
Sprite 0 0 -
Limca 0 0 0 -
No. of times 2 3 1
preffered
 Rank Order Scale:
• This is another type of comparative scaling technique
in which respondents are presented with several items
simultaneously and asked to rank them in the order of
priority.
• This is an ordinal scale that describes the favoured and
unfavoured objects, but does not reveal the distance
between the objects.
• The resultant data in rank order is ordinal data. This
yields better results when direct comparison are
required between the given objects.
• The major disadvantage of this technique is that only
ordinal data can be generated.
Preference of brands using rank order
• Pick one brand which you like most and give 1
rank.
• Continue till you ranked all brands
• Least preferred brand should be assign 4
Brand Rank
Coke 2
Pepsi 1
Sprite 4
Limca 3
 Constant Sum Scale:
• In this scale, the respondents are asked to
allocate a constant sum of units such as points,
rupees, or chips among a set of stimulus objects
with respect to some criterion.
• For example, you may wish to determine how
important the attributes of price, fragrance,
packaging, cleaning power, and lather of a
detergent are to consumers.
• Respondents might be asked to divide a constant
sum to indicate the relative importance of the
attributes.
• The advantage of this technique is saving
time. However, main disadvantages are the
respondents may allocate more or fewer
points than those specified. The second
problem is respondents might be confused.
 Importance of detergent attributes
using Constant sum scale
• Allocation of 100 points among different
attributes

Attribute No. of Points

Price 20
Fragrance 20
Packaging 20
Cleaning 30
Brand 10
 Q-Sort Scale:
• This is a comparative scale that uses a rank order
procedure to sort objects based on similarity with
respect to some criterion.
• The important characteristic of this methodology
is that it is more important to make comparisons
among different responses of a respondent than
the responses between different respondents.
Therefore, it is a comparative method of scaling
rather than an absolute rating scale.
• In this method the respondent is given
statements in a large number for describing the
characteristics of a product or a large number of
brands of a product.
 Preference of book using Q sort
• The bag give to you contain pictures of 90
magazine, please choose 10 magazines you
‘prefer most’, 20 you ‘like’, 30 neutral, 20
‘dislike’ and 10 ‘prefer least’.
• Please list them:
 Non- Comparative Scales
• In non-comparative scaling respondents need
only evaluate a single object. Their evaluation
is independent of the other object which the
researcher is studying.
• The non-comparative scaling techniques can
be further divided into: (a)Continuous Rating
Scale, and (b)Itemized Rating Scale.
 Continuous Rating Scales :
• It is very simple and highly useful.
• In continuous rating scale, the respondent’s
rate the objects by placing a mark at the
appropriate position on a continuous line that
runs from one extreme of the criterion
variable to the other.
• Example : Question: How would you rate the
TV advertisement as a guide for buying?

• Strongly Agree (10)---------------------------

strongly disagree (0)
• How would you rate the TV advertisement as
a guide for buying?
• Strongly agree--------------------Strongly disagree
 Itemized Rating Scales :
• Itemized rating scale is a scale having numbers or
brief descriptions associated with each category.
• The categories are ordered in terms of scale
position and the respondents are required to
select one of the limited number of categories
that best describes the product, brand, company,
or product attribute being rated.
• Itemized rating scales are widely used in
marketing research.
• Itemised rating scales is further divided into
three parts, namely
• (a) Likert scale,
• (b) Semantic Differential Scale, and
• (c) Stapel Scale.
• The itemized rating scales can be in the form
of :
• (a) graphic, (Emojis)
• (b) verbal, (Completely Satisfied, Somewhat
satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied,
Somewhat dissatisfied, Completely
dissatisfied)
• (c) numeric as shown below :
– (-5,-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,4,5)
• Quality : Excellent, Good, Not decided, poor ,
worst
• Importance: Very important, fairly important,
neutral, not so important, not at all important
• Interest: Very interested, Somewhat
interested, neither-nor, Somewhat dissatified,
Completely Dissatisfied
 Likert Scale:
• Likert, is extremely popular for measuring
attitudes, because, the method is simple to
administer.
• With the Likert scale, the respondents indicate
their own attitudes by checking how strongly
they agree or disagree with carefully worded
statements that range from very positive to very
negative towards the attitudinal object.
• Respondents generally choose from five
alternatives (say strongly agree, agree, neither
agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree).
• A Likert scale may include a number of items
or statements.
• Disadvantage of Likert Scale is that it takes
longer time to complete than other itemised
rating scales because respondents have to
read each statement. Despite the above
disadvantages, this scale has several
advantages. It is easy to construct, administer
and use.
 Semantic Differential Scale:
• This is a seven point rating scale with end points
associated with bipolar labels (such as good and
bad, complex and simple) that have semantic
meaning.
• It can be used to find whether a respondent has a
positive or negative attitude towards an object.
• It has been widely used in comparing brands,
products and company images. It has also been
used to develop advertising and promotion
strategies and in a new product development
study.
 Staple Scale:
• The Staple scale was originally developed to
measure the direction and intensity of an attitude
simultaneously.
• Modern versions of the Staple scale place a single
adjective as a substitute for the Semantic
differential when it is difficult to create pairs of
bipolar adjectives.
• The modified Staple scale places a single
adjective in the center of an even number of
numerical Values.
Processing & collection of Data
 Processing operation
• 1. Editing: Editing of data is a process of
examining the collected raw data (specially in
surveys) to detect errors and omissions and to
correct these when possible.
• As a matter of fact, editing involves a careful
scrutiny of the completed questionnaires and/or
schedules.
• Editing is done to assure that the data are
accurate, consistent with other facts gathered,
uniformly entered, as completed as possible and
have been well arranged to facilitate coding and
tabulation.
• 2.Coding: Coding refers to the process of
assigning numerals or other symbols to answers
so that responses can be put into a limited
number of categories or classes.
• Such classes should be appropriate to the
research problem under consideration. They
must also possess the characteristic of
exhaustiveness (i.e., there must be a class for
every data item) and also that of mutual
exclusively which means that a specific answer
can be placed in one and only one cell in a given
category set.
• Another rule to be observed is that of
unidimensionality by which is meant that every
class is defined in terms of only one concept.
• 3. Classification: Most research studies result
in a large volume of raw data which must be
reduced into homogeneous groups if we are
to get meaningful relationships. This fact
necessitates classification of data which
happens to be the process of arranging data in
groups or classes on the basis of common
characteristics. Data having a common
characteristic are placed in one class and in
this way the entire data get divided into a
number of groups or classes.
• (a) Classification according to attributes: As stated
above, data are classified on the basis of common
characteristics which can either be descriptive (such as
literacy, sex, honesty, etc.) or numerical (such as
weight, height, income, etc.). Descriptive
characteristics refer to qualitative phenomenon which
cannot be measured quantitatively; only their presence
or absence in an individual item can be noticed. Data
obtained this way on the basis of certain attributes are
known as statistics of attributes and their classification
is said to be classification according to attributes.
• Classification according to class-intervals: Unlike
descriptive characteristics, the numerical
characteristics refer to quantitative phenomenon
which can be measured through some statistical
units. Data relating to income, production, age,
weight, etc. come under this category. Such data
are known as statistics of variables and are
classified on the basis of class intervals. For
instance, persons whose incomes, say, are within
Rs 201 to Rs 400 can form one group, those
whose incomes are within Rs 401 to Rs 600 can
form another group and so on.
4. Tabulation: When a mass of data has been
assembled, it becomes necessary for the
researcher to arrange the same in some kind of
concise and logical order.
This procedure is referred to as tabulation. Thus,
tabulation is the process of summarizing raw
data and displaying the same in compact form
(i.e., in the form of statistical tables) for further
analysis. In a broader sense, tabulation is an
orderly arrangement of data in columns and
rows.