Response categories in health- related questionnaires measuring Attitudes

Different people might respond to a question differently. But do they value the same when they choose a response category to respond to a given question. For instance when they choose ‘excellent’ do they have the same evaluation in their mind. This study aimed to investigate people’s evaluation of different response categories usually used in health-related questionnaires measuring attitudes.
A population-based study was conducted in Tehran, Iran. A representative sample of adults aged 18 to 65 years were entered into the study and were asked to respond to a questionnaire. The questionnaire contained different visual analogue scales (from 0 to 10 with 0 being at lowest and 10 at highest extreme) in order to evaluate different verbal response categories measuring attitudes.
In all 1109 respondents completed the questionnaire. The mean age of participants was 34.36 (SD = 11.82) years and they were relatively well educated (mean formal education = 11.99, SD = 3.93 years). The analysis of the data indicated that in most instances the participants showed almost similar evaluation when responding to items measuring attitudes. The mean point equivalent numeric figure for ‘Strongly agree’ was 9.57 (SD = 0.94) while for ‘Agree’ it was 7.89 (SD = 1.45) and for ‘Strongly disagree’ it was 0.37 (SD = 0.76). There were no significant differences in people’s evaluation with regards to age, gender, education, marital and employment status.
Overall, the findings showed that people had almost similar evaluation of response categories when responding to attitude-related items. The findings suggest since people perceive similar meaning for verbal response categories it is safe to ask people to rate different response categories.