The wording of bipolar attitude scales in Chinese

Abstract

There is a serious dearth of detailed work on designing questionnaires in many of the world's major languages. This paper focuses on attitude rating scales which form part of Likert-type questionnaires in Chinese (Putonghua). In particular, it looks at whether the design problems for scales of agree-disagree and approve-disapprove are similar in English and Chinese. It concludes that they are not, and that workable bipolar scales of approval especially are difficult to construct in Chinese. A number of suggested scales are offered as a help to those wanting to design attitude questionnaires, though the point is made that more empirical testing is needed.