Figure 1.

Common inventory items for assessing attitude. The three most common types of items used in attitude inventories or scales include: dichotomous, semantic-differential, and Likert-type items. All three formats consist of a question stem followed by several response options. Each of these three types differ in the number and types of response options. Dichotomous items contain just two response options, while semantic-differential and Likert-type items are polytomous. Semantic-differential items use a bipolar adjective list or pair of descriptive statements that examinees use to select a response option out of a range of values that best matches their agreement. Likert-type items include a declarative statement followed by several levels of agreement along a span of (usually) five to seven response options. Semantic-differential items from Lopatto (2004). Likert response–format items from Russell and Hollander (1975) and Seymour et al. (2000).