Carifio And Perla Summary

Carifio, J., & Perla, R. J. (2007). Ten common misunderstandings, misconceptions, persistent myths and urban legends about Likert scales and Likert response formats and their antidotes. Journal of Social Sciences, 3(3), 106-116.
Carifio and Perla discussed how a previous article by Jamieson had many misunderstandings, misconceptions, conceptual errors, myths, and urban legends about Likert scales and their features. Carifio and Perla address these misunderstanding and misconceptions and explain through examples why these are errors. Carifio and Perla suggest that the lack of knowledge and ability to distinguished between Likert scale and Likert response format in itself causes lots of confusion and misunderstandings. Carifio and Perla state that scale items are not independent but structured and whole. Hence researchers cannot analyze responses to the Likert scale questions one item at a time, but should rather analyze them as a whole set of items evaluating the specific properties.
They used great examples and analogies to further explain why the myths are not true. Carifio and Perla highlighted the importance of the distinction between Likert scales and Likert response formats. They referenced scientists who used Likert scale instead of Likert response format and how this can lead to confusion and error. Carifio and Perla generalized the pitfalls of Likert scales to not just one science, but all sciences, by doing this they are creating more awareness and knowledge for researchers in all fiends about the common pitfalls of Likert scales and their