rating

rating, rating scales Rating scales require respondents to make a judgement of absolute value—as, for example, in the case of a university professor grading student assignments according to their scholarly excellence. Typically, in sociological research, respondents are asked, for example, to indicate the prestige of different occupations on a scale from (say) one to ten; or, similarly, to indicate how enthusiastic or unenthusiastic they are about a range of government policies, on a (perhaps five-point) scale ranging from ‘entirely support’ at one extreme, to ‘entirely oppose’ at the other (with intermediate ratings of ‘mildly support’, ‘disinterested’, and ‘mildly oppose’). See also LIKERT SCALE; RANKING.