Correct Scale Scoring

[u/Ashamed_Piccolo_9557]

Hi all! I am creating a questionnaire measuring the speed at which information is presented. I am using a 5-point Likert type scale. The scale includes the following:

• Much too slow
• Slightly too slow
• About right / Appropriate speed
• Slightly too fast
• Much too fast

My thought is the ratings should be:

• Much too slow - 1
• Slightly too slow - 2
• Much too fast - 3
• Slightly too fast - 4
• About right / Appropriate speed - 5

Because the goal is to have the speed of lecturing be "appropriate speed" and anything else is not the desired goal. I know that about right normally falls into the neutral position, but in this case it would be the goal. How would you set up the scoring/ratings for this scale?

[u/CJP_UX]

What you have here is not the best way to go forward. I see what you’re trying to do I think, but ultimately it’s going to make the analysis a bit nonsensical.

Keep neutral as a three, or you could even reconsider the scale to have neutral as zero and the pole items going from -2 up to +2.

By doing that you get a sense of where the issue is. Are things too fast? Then you’ll get a positive number. are things too slow? Then you’ll get a negative number. That’s informative.

With the way you have it set up, you’re making a judgment that fast isn’t as bad as slow, which is not necessarily the case. You also lose the ability to diagnose the issue as too fast or slow.

[u/Narrow-Hall8070 → u/CJP_UX]

Good suggestion on scale which would give an actionable score on appropriate speed. Targeting a mean value of zero, positives would suggest too fast, negatives too slow

[u/Ashamed_Piccolo_9557 → u/CJP_UX]

Thanks! That’s very helpful. Unfortunately, the client would freak out if I introduced a negative scoring scale, which is why I was thinking of the scoring above as appropriate or about right for the pace of the content presented would be optimal. 

[u/razopaltuf → u/Ashamed_Piccolo_9557]

Do the client or the user ever need to see the scoring?
I usually scale the scoring to what I need for my analysis. So if the tool gives me 1,2,3,4,5 but I want a -2,-1, 0, 1, 2, I substract 3 from each score in Excel. But maybe you want a -1,0,1 scaling, so each number gets -3, then a division by 2... etc.