Effects of Some Variations in Rating Scale Characteristics on the Means and Reliabilities of Ratings

a great deal of attention over the years, with an excellent summary of pertinent work being provided by Guilford (1954, Chapter 11). Certainly one of the more widely used types of rating scales is the simple graphic, ordinal type, and there seems to be an unlimited variety of ways in which the characteristics of such scales may be varied. Two obvious and popular ways in which scale characteristics may be varied are the number of scale levels and the manner with which scale levels are defined. Basic questions that are thus raised concern the effects of such variations on the means and the reliabilities of the resulting ratings. Several earlier studies seem to be especially germane to these questions. Madden and Bourdon (1964) report a study of occupational evaluation where each of 15 occupations