Simple rating scale formats: exploring extreme response

Rating measurement methods represent one of the most popular and easily applied datacollection methods in marketing and social science research. These methods use rating scales, which are a type of closed-end question whose response alternatives are graduated or organised to measure a continuous construct such as an attitude, opinion, intention, perception or preference (Peterson 2000, p. 61). Rating scales come in 'all shapes and sizes'. For example, some of the many possible alternative scales for measuring one construct – such as, for instance, 'effectiveness' – include a seven-point numerical scale anchored by adjectives like 'completely effective' to 'completely ineffective', a percentage scale presented in either a continuous format (e.g. 0% to 100%) or in a categorical fashion (e.g. 91%–100%, 81%–90%, 71%–80%, and so forth), or measures containing various degrees of verbal categories, like 'very effective', 'somewhat effective', 'somewhat ineffective' and 'very ineffective'.

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