successive categories or intervals

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successive categories or intervals A method of data collection and (unidimensional) scaling, where attitudinal or questionnaire items have been judged by the respondent in terms of an ordinal scale of categories, such as the five-category bipolar scale ‘wholly agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, wholly disagree’. The method allows both the category intervals and the items to be quantified. See also MEASUREMENT.