Cultural bias and likert-type scales revisited

摘要

In 1988,I asked the question whether Likert-type scale formats might be culturally biased (Flaskerad, 1988). Two experiences that our research team encountered led me to ask this question. In both studies, the participants were non-English speaking refugee populations new to Los Angeles: a Southeast Asian group and a Central American group. Both groups experienced difficulties with the format of ordinal scaling, however the problems differed somewhat between the two groups. In each case instruments had been translated and back-translated using bilingual translators; they were pilot tested, and reliability and validity were established.