Likert scale attitude measure – UGC NET Question

A Likert scale asks respondents to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with statements on a typically five- or seven-point ordered scale. It produces ordinal data that can be summarised to reflect attitudes toward the object. Because of its simplicity and reliability, it is widely used in social science questionnaires. Therefore, the attitude scale described in the stem is correctly called a Likert scale.

Option A:
The semantic differential scale uses bipolar adjective pairs, such as good–bad, to measure the connotative meaning of concepts, which is different from agreement statements. It is a separate scaling technique. So it is not the best answer here.

Option B:
A rating scale is a broad term for any item in which respondents assign a value along a continuum, but it does not specifically refer to the agree–disagree format developed by Likert. Hence, this term is too general.

Option C:
The Guttman scale, or cumulative scale, arranges items so that agreement with a stronger statement implies agreement with weaker ones. It has a different structure and scoring logic from the Likert approach. Therefore, it does not match the description in the question.

Option D:
Option D, Likert scale, uses multiple items whose scores are summed to form an attitude index. The strongly agree to strongly disagree response categories are its hallmark. This directly fits the stem, making the option correct.