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Likert Scales

Likert scales involve the use of a standardized set of responses that can be used to answer a variety of questions or statements. Any scale where you force respondents to use the same, standardized response categories, and where those response categories are ordinally related to one another (ranked) is a likert scale.

Likert scales are efficient in terms of space (see below) and in terms of ease of use: after a few items, users can move really quickly through a set of items because the response instructions are all the same. Likert scales have some definite advantages as far as data analysis as well. In short, if you can use likert scales for your purpose, do so -- you should only avoid them if you have a definite reason for NOT using them.

It may seem easier to simply reproduce the response categories for respondents after each item, like this:

I like broccoli.
Strongly agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
I like chocolate cake.
Strongly agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree

This is OK, but it wastes a lot of vertical space, which is at a premium. Here is another situation where tables are going to come in very handy. You can use the columns of a table to indicate response choices with a column heading, like so:

	Strongly Agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly Disagree
1. I like broccoli.
2. I like chocolate cake.

Much neater, correct? Uses about 1/5th of the vertical space for the same amount of information. Easier to fill out as well, since a column always has the same meaning. Some important tips, however:

If your questionnaire is very long, with too many items to fit all at once on the user's browser page, you should break up the table into multiple tables, with the column labels included at the top of each. That way the column labels will always be visible, rather than scrolling off the top of the page when the user reaches a certain point in the questionnaire. You can use automatic scrolling behaviors attached to the radio buttons to automate this process.
Center the column labels and radio buttons in the columns, for extra clarity.
When you are designing the table, MAKE SURE YOU SPECIFY COLUMN WIDTHS IN PIXELS, not percentages of the page width or table width. If you do the latter, your table get scrunched or wider depending on the width of the user's browser window (though you can avoid this for the most part by setting window properties ahead of time).

Here's another way to use tables for likert-type items, which I think is stylistically preferable. Instead of using borders to delineate rows, you can use alternating shades of color within the table rows (or you can do this in addition to using borders). Here's a border-free table that employs colors to delineate rows.

	Strongly Agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly Disagree
1. I like broccoli.
2. I like spinach.
3. I like chocolate cake.
4. I like hamburgers.
5. I like baked potatoes.

Dreamweaver has a very nice feature here that allows you to automate the formatting of a table, alternating colors, choosing from color schemes, etc., which is not easy to find by just bouncing through the menus. It's under the Commands menu, called Table Format. Just select the entire table, and go to Table Format to choose your alternating colors.