Ten Common Misunderstandings, Misconceptions, Persistent Myths and Urban Legends about Likert Scales and Likert Response Formats and their Antidotes

A recent article by Jamieson in Medical Education outlined some of the (alleged) abuses of scales with suggestions about how researchers can overcome some of the (alleged) methodological pitfalls and limitations[1]. However, many of the ideas advanced in the Jamison article, as well as a great many of articles it cited, and similar recent articles in medical, health, psychology, and educational journals and books, are themselves common misunderstandings, misconceptions, conceptual errors, persistent myths and about scales and their characteristics and qualities that have been propagated and perpetuated across six decades, for a variety of different reasons. This article identifies, analyses and traces many of…