Response to Rating Scales: A Theoretical Model and Its Application to the Number of Categories Problem

A stochastic model of response to rating scales, using the beta distribution, is developed and tested against empirical data. The effect of number of items by number of points on the sampling error of a composite scale value estimator is investigated and quantitatively formulated. An application of this formulation to arrive at optimal combinations of number of points and number of items is described.

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