Journal of Social Service Research

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Can Likert Scales be Treated as Interval Scales?—A

Simulation Study

Huiping Wu & Shing-On Leung

To cite this article: Huiping Wu & Shing-On Leung (2017) Can Likert Scales be Treated as
Interval Scales?—A Simulation Study, Journal of Social Service Research, 43:4, 527-532, DOI:
10.1080/01488376.2017.1329775

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Published online: 06 Jun 2017.

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JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH
2017, VOL. 43, NO. 4, 527–532
https://doi.org/10.1080/01488376.2017.1329775

Can Likert Scales be Treated as Interval Scales?—A Simulation Study

Huiping Wua and Shing-On Leungb
a
College of Mathematics and Computer Science, Fujian Normal University, Fujian, China; bFaculty of Education, University of Macau, Macau,
China

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The Likert scale is widely used in social work research, and is commonly constructed with four to Likert scale; ordinal scale;
seven points. It is usually treated as an interval scale, but strictly speaking it is an ordinal scale, interval scale; normality
where arithmetic operations cannot be conducted. There are pros and cons in using the Likert scale
as an interval scale, but the controversy can be handled by increasing the number of points. Several
researchers have suggested bringing the number up to eleven, on the basis of empirical data. In
this article the authors explore this rational and share the same view, but simulate artificial data
from both symmetrical normal and skewed distributions where the underlying metric is known in
advance. Results show that more Likert scale points will result in a closer approach to the
underlying distribution, and hence normality and interval scales. To increase generalizability social
work practitioners are encouraged to use 11-point Likert scales from 0 to 10, a natural and easily
comprehensible range.

Introduction
The Likert (1932) scale is widely used in social service
practice, e.g. in assessing the satisfaction of young or
elderly people with services provided by frontline
social workers. Tsui (1997) critically reviewed many
empirical studies in the supervision of social workers,
and found that most of them used a Likert scale in
mailed self-administered questionnaires. A Likert
scale is basically an ordinal scale measure, and there is
a very long-standing and controversial question about
whether it can perform arithmetic operations such as
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. For
instance, a four-point Likert scale with categories
labeled “strongly agree”, “agree”, “disagree” and
“strongly disagree” would be assigned conventional
values from 1 to 4, which were then treated as numeri-
cal numbers automatically. Strictly speaking, this
violates the basic assumptions of an ordinal level mea-
sure (Jamieson, 2004). Beyond this, the next question
is whether normal distribution assumptions hold, as
this is the basis of many statistical tests such as t-tests,
ANOVA etc.
On the other hand, there are recommendations to
increase the number of Likert scale points to make it
closer to continuous scales and normality.
Traditionally, the number of points in a Likert scale
can be as few as three or four. If it can be increased to
eleven, a common metric that ranges from 0 to 10, as
recommended by Hodge and Gillespie (2007) and
Leung (2011), it can be treated as a continuous mea-
sure and hence arithmetic operations can be used. In
this paper, we investigate whether an increased num-
ber of Likert scale points can lead to a better approxi-
mation of an interval scale and normality via
simulations. The issue starts with four levels of
measurement.
Stevens (1946) proposed four levels of measure-
ment scales: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. The
nominal scale is only considered to be a label, with
nothing basically related to numerical values. The
ordinal scale is order-preserving, only indicating rank
and order. Strictly speaking, the Likert scale is an ordi-
nal scale and cannot perform arithmetic operations.
When intervals between successful values of the ordi-
nal scale are equally spaced, an interval scale is pro-
duced. However, the zero point on an interval scale is
a matter of convenience. If there is a meaningful zero,
it is then a ratio scale. Theoretically, only interval and
ratio scales are considered to be continuous, where
arithmetic operations can be conducted, while

CONTACT Shing-On Leung soleung@umac.mo Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China.
© 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
528 H. WU AND S.-O. LEUNG
nominal and ordinal scales are considered to be cate-
gorical data, where arithmetic operation should not be
conducted. There are many studies dealing with the
disadvantages of treating ordinal as interval scales.
Jamieson (2004) reviewed ways of using and abusing
Likert scales, and stated that it is a common practice,
but controversial, to treat a Likert scale as interval
scale. Computing means and standard deviations for
Likert scale data are considered to be inappropriate.
Instead, nonparametric statistics should be used.
Kuzon, Urbanchek, and McCabe (1996) maintained
that one of the seven deadly sins of statistical analysis
is using parametric analysis for ordinal scales. There
are thus arguments against the use of Likert scales as
continuous measures.
On the other hand, there are arguments in favor of
considering Likert scales as continuous interval scales.
Historically, Stevens (1946) did agree that treating ordi-
nal as interval scales resulted in many fruitful and
meaningful findings, and this was re-stated in Knapp
(1990); Lord (1953) maintained that what counted was
that a statistical analysis should be meaningful. There
have been numerous studies illustrating what ‘fruitful’
and ‘“meaningful’ mean. One such example was under-
taken by Grolnick, Benjet, Kurowski, and Apostoleris
(1997), measuring parents’ involvement in children’s
schooling. Another was the famous Rosenberg Self-
Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), which is still widely
used to measure global self-esteem. In fact, Harwell
and Gatti (2001) conducted a study of three journals
(American Educational Research Journal, Sociology of
Education and Journal of Educational Psychology),
and concluded that “educational researchers regularly
employ ordinal-scaled dependent variables in analyses
typically described as requiring to be interval scales”.
The dilemma is then that, even though the Likert scale
violates basic statistical assumptions, many studies find
it useful. However, the issue may be a matter of degree
rather than requiring a binary yes-or-no answer, as will
explained below.
The term ‘imperfect interval scale’ was first intro-
duced by Borgatta and Bohrnstedt (1980), who sug-
gested that at the manifest and observed level most
measurements probably lie between perfect ordinal
and perfect interval scales. Hence, the question can be
re-formulated as: “How far can the ordinal be from
the interval scale?” instead of “Can an ordinal be
treated as an interval scale?”. One way to do this is to
increase the number of points in the Likert scale.
An early conjecture was made by Knapp (1990),
who stated that increasing the number of points tends
to “continuise” ordinal towards interval scales. Hodge
and Gillespie (2007) suggested the Phrase Completion
Scale (PCS), which is essentially an 11-point Likert
scale, with ends labeled as zero and 10, referring
respectively to the absence and maximum amount of
a construct. Leung and Xu (2013) have used this to
recommend single-item scales for subjective academic
performance, self-esteem and socio-economic status.
Hodge and Gillespie (2007) compared PCS empiri-
cally with a five-point Likert response key by a variety
of indicators: written comments, Cronbach’s alphas,
inter-item correlations, factor scores and SEM coeffi-
cients, and found that PCS had higher validity and
reliability. Leung (2011) also compared the psycho-
metric properties of four-, five-, six- and 11-point Lik-
ert scales empirically, and found that there was no
differences in means and standard deviations, but
more points would result in less skewness and kurtosis
and a close approach to normality and hence interval
scales. In this way, both studies used empirical data to
show that more points would produce better results.
But the problem with empirical data is that the under-
lying continuum or models may be debatable. An
alternative is to use simulation.
Simulations have the advantage that, though artifi-
cial, the underlying continuum or models are known
in advance, and can be manipulated by researchers. In
this paper, we simulate artificial data from known
symmetrical normal distributions, and also skewed
gamma distributions so that the underlying contin-
uum is either continuously symmetric or skewed. The
purpose of this paper is therefore to investigate
whether increasing the number of Likert scale points
will produce a result closer to the underlying metric,
and hence interval scales. Further, since we know the
underlying continuum, we can analyze whether simu-
lated data aligns with the true continuum if the num-
ber of points increases. Details of the method are
discussed in the next section.
Methodology
Simulation Design
The author’s use simulation to explore the effects of
the number of Likert scale points on the degree of
departure from the underlying distribution. Data is
generated from known underlying distributions and

hence there is a known standard to cross-check
the methods employed. To explore this concept a
symmetric normal and a very skewed gamma-type
distribution was used for comparison. In order to
form categories from an underlying metric, a discre-
tized a continuous scale was applied, as follows.
Discretization
After choosing the underlying distribution, the next
step is to discretize a continuous distribution, as Likert
scale data is discrete. Two obvious ways are equal
probability and equal interval width. For equal proba-
bility discretization, we divide the whole range into k
categories with equal probability to produce k–1
thresholds, i.e. the area percentages in each category
are 1/ k. Here, k represents the number of Likert scale
points and takes the values 4, 5, 6, 7 and 11, with 11
representing an easy comprehension range from 0 to
10. These five cover the numbers of Likert scale points
used in most practical situations.
For equal interval discretization, we need to trun-
cate if the end points are either -1 or C1. The
normal range is ¡1 to C1. We have used ¡5 and
C5 as the lower and upper limits, which will result
in two negligible tails with a sum of probabilities of
0.0000317. The range (¡5, 5) is then divided into k
intervals of equal width. The range of a gamma dis-
tribution is (0, C1), and the upper limit is defined
as the point where an equal tail probability of
0.0000317 is neglected, making normal and gamma
comparable.
Apart from equal probability and width discretiza-
tion, we add two more supplementary choices. The
first is a symmetric bell shape but with unequal proba-
bilities. We start with k D 4 with probabilities in four
categories: 0.187, 0.313, 0.313 and 0.187. For k > 4
categories, we keep the symmetric properties and at
the same time keep the standard deviation unchanged.
For this symmetric discretization, we use only sym-
metric normal as skewed gamma is not appropriate
here. The second is a skewed discretization. We start
with k D 4 and with probabilities in four categories:
0.30, 040, 0.25, and 0.05. For k > 4, we keep to the
skewness as closely as possible, but there are practical
difficulties in keeping it exactly the same. For this
skewed discretization we use only the gamma, as sym-
metric normal is not suitable here. To summarize, we
have the following six simulation conditions.
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SERVICES RESEARCH 529
1. Equal probability discretization and normal
underlying distribution
2. Equal probability discretization and gamma
underlying distribution
3. Equal interval discretization and normal under-
lying distribution
4. Equal interval discretization and gamma under-
lying distribution
5. Symmetric discretization and normal underly-
ing distribution
6. Skewed discretization and gamma underlying
distribution
Simulation Procedures and Scores
We simulate N D 10,000 data points under each of the
six conditions above, and record the number of cases
falling into k categories, i.e., N1, N2, …, Nk such that
N1 C N2 C … C Nk D N. We define two scores, raw
and true. The raw scores range from 0, 1, 2, …, k–1
and are assigned in conventional order. We start at 0
so that an 11-point scale corresponds to the popularly
recognized scale of 0 to 10. The raw score is used by
most social work practitioners. True scores are defined
as the mid-points of the category boundaries, and are
known as ‘true scores’ because they are calculated
from the underlying distribution by means of which
data is simulated.
Statistical Procedures
Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) statistics are employed to
detect departures from the underlying distribution.
The smaller the KS statistical value, the closer to the
underlying distribution, and vice versa. Apart from
the KS test, correlations are calculated under each of
the six conditions to investigate the departure of raw
from true scores.
Results
Table 1 reports the KS statistics for raw and true
scores under six conditions for different values of k. In
Table 1, the KS statistics generally decrease with k.
Exceptions are found in the true scores in the equal
interval discretization case, regardless of whether the
underlying distribution is normal or gamma.
In this equal interval case the true scores fully repre-
sent the true distribution, whatever number of Likert
points is used, since there is no loss of information even
530 H. WU AND S.-O. LEUNG

Table 1. The KS statistics for the raw and true scores under 6 conditions for different values of k.
Equal Probability Equal interval
Symmetric Skewed
Normal Gamma Normal Gamma Normal Gamma

K Raw True Raw True Raw True Raw True Raw True Raw True

4 0.176 0.188 0.932 0.234 0.346 0.004 0.932 0.010 0.191 0.216 0.932 0.302
5 0.162 0.188 0.932 0.186 0.318 0.004 0.932 0.010 0.148 0.194 0.932 0.445
6 0.143 0.182 0.932 0.157 0.260 0.004 0.932 0.010 0.138 0.162 0.932 0.268
7 0.127 0.174 0.932 0.133 0.234 0.004 0.932 0.010 0.120 0.154 0.932 0.257
11 0.103 0.134 0.843 0.084 0.150 0.004 0.874 0.010 0.121 0.122 0.829 0.192

when k is as small as 4. All KS values are very small and
the same for different values of k. Another very minor
exception is in the case of skewed discretization with
gamma the underlying distribution. The KS values are
slightly smaller with k D 4 than k D 5, but in general
KS values decrease with k. This is perhaps due to the
limitation in controlling the skewness across different
values of k. Apart from these two minor exceptions, all
the KS values decrease with k. Hence, increasing k, and
thus the number of Likert scale points, will bring the
distribution closer to the underlying value. Under the
skewed gamma distribution, the KS statistics of the raw
scores are always very high, with a minimum of 0.83
and all others no greater than 0.45, indicating that the
raw score cannot represent the underlying distribution
when it is very skewed. This is because raw scores
assume an equal width interval between categories, but
if the underlying distribution is very skewed this
assumption is invalid.
The general conclusion in Table 1 is that the raw
scores cannot represent the underlying distribution
when it is very skewed, and that an increase in the
number of Likert scale points makes the distribution
closer to the underlying value.
Table 2 reports the correlations between raw and
true scores under six conditions for different values of k.
In Table 2, most correlations are very high. When
the underlying distribution is normal, the correlations
between raw and true scores are all higher than 0.85,
Table 2. Correlations between the raw and true scores under 6
conditions for different values of k.
Equal Probability Equal Interval
Symmetric
Normal Gamma Normal Gamma
4 0.979 0.800 0.855 0.767
5 0.961 0.752 0.894 0.831
6 0.948 0.720 0.926 0.875
7 0.937 0.695 0.943 0.902
11 0.919 0.644 0.976 0.954
indicating that the formers are more suitable when the
underlying distribution is symmetric normal rather
than skewed gamma. It is noted that under equal
probability discretization and with the underlying dis-
tribution being normal, correlations decrease slightly
from 0.979 when k D 4 to 0.919 when k D 11. When
k is as small as 4, the scale is relatively robust and the
raw score is closer to the true score and the correlation
higher. When k is as high as 11, the loss of informa-
tion is lower, reflecting the reality that the raw scores
deviate from the true, and that the correlations are
therefore lower.
Under equal probability discretization, the same
trend is observed under gamma distribution. The cor-
relation decreases from 0.8 when k D 4 to 0.644 when
k D 11. The same reasoning applies here. However,
there is an additional factor: under skewed gamma
distribution the equal-width raw scores deviate much
further from the true scores, as the situation is more
serious here.
Interestingly, when the underlying distribution is
normal, the trend of correlations is reversed under
equal interval discretization. The correlations increase
from 0.855 when k D 4 to 0.976 when k D 11, because
with equal interval discretization the raw scores align
with the true, and with k increasing the loss of infor-
mation will be smaller so that in this case the raw
scores will be closer to the true.
When the underlying distribution is gamma, the
correlations are in general lower than when it is
normal. The correlations are highest under equal-
interval discretization, moderate under skewed
discretization and lowest under equal-probability
Skewed discretization. This is because under equal-interval
Normal Gamma
conditions the raw scores tend to be aligned with the
0.978 0.783 true, but will deviate from them when it is a case of
0.965 0.830
0.959 0.787 equal probability. The skewed discretization lies
0.961 0.781 somewhere between equal-probability and equal-
0.980 0.875
interval discretization.

Further, when the underlying distribution is skewed
gamma and with equal-interval discretization, the cor-
relations increase with k, from 0.767 when k D 4 to
0.954 when k D 11, since when k increases the raw
scores will be closer to the true scores.
When the discretization is symmetric and skewed,
there is no clear trend of correlations with k. However,
they are highest when k D 11, with correlations of
0.980 and 0.875, respectively, for symmetric and
skewed discretization. We conjecture that the correla-
tions would be higher if there were more Likert scale
points, but this is subject to further research. Other-
wise, it is quite clear that correlations between raw
and true scores are very high (from 0.959 to 0.980)
under symmetric discretization compared with
skewed discretization (with correlations ranging from
0.781 to 0.875). In this way, raw scores are always
aligned more closely with true scores when the under-
lying distribution is symmetric.
Discussion and Conclusions
Whether the Likert scale can be considered an interval-
scale continuous measurement is the subject of long-
standing debate; references and discussion can be found
in the Introduction. Hodge and Gillespie (2007); Leung
(2011) suggested increasing the number of points to 11
with empirical support, but the underlying metric of
empirical data is always debatable. This paper comple-
ments the above findings via simulation, which has the
advantage that the right model is known in advance.
We simulate data from six conditions covering equal-
probability, equal-interval, symmetric, and skewed dis-
tributions. Symmetric normal and skewed gamma dis-
tributions are chosen to be the underlying distributions.
The results show that KS statistics generally decrease
with the number of points, indicating a move closer to
the underlying metric. The raw scores are commonly
used by most social work practitioners, and are closer
to the underlying metric when the underlying distribu-
tion is symmetric. Overall, the important conclusion is
that increasing the number of Likert scale points will
bring the scale closer to the underlying distributions
with lower values of KS statistics. This is in line with
Hodge and Gillespie (2007) and Leung (2011) that
increasing the number of points will bring the scales
closer to the continuous. Further, there is also theoreti-
cal support for the view that more information will be
transmitted with more points and hence more
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SERVICES RESEARCH 531
categories, and the results will measure more precisely
(Alwin, 1997). These results encourage social work
practitioners to use Likert scales with more points.
The correlations between raw and true scores are
high when the underlying distribution is symmetric
normal, but low when it is skewed. The important
implication is that equally spaced raw scores align
with true values when the underlying distribution is
symmetric, but deviate from them when the distribu-
tion is skewed, making the usual raw scores more suit-
able when the underlying distribution is symmetric, or
closer to symmetry.
As for the effects of the number of Likert scale
points on correlation trends, the directions of equal-
probability and interval discretization are the reverse
of each other. The correlation decreases with k in the
former case but increases in the latter. Increasing the
number of Likert scale points increases information,
while reducing it loses information. With equal-prob-
ability discretization, more Likert scale points make it
closer to the true scale, the raw scores deviate further
from the true and the correlations are consequently
lower. On the other hand, with equal-interval discreti-
zation, the raw scores are closer to the true, and more
Likert scale points will make the scale closer to the
one represented by the raw scores. The trend is not so
clear with symmetric and skewed discretization, and
this leaves room for further research, which is also
needed into the methods of discretization. This study
uses equal-probability and equal-interval, symmetric
and skewed discretization. We believe that such meth-
ods form a good starting point, but that there may be
other ways to discretize underlying distributions, and
hence supplement the results of the present paper.
For frontline social work practitioners, raw
scores are obviously the easiest and most conve-
nient to use. From this simulation study, we sug-
gest increasing the number of points to 11, making
it closer to normality and interval scales. Further,
there is the added advantage of an easily compre-
hensible range from 0 to 10.
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