Research Topics:

Attitude/Usage Studies

Content Type:

Glossary

Attitudinal Scaling Definition

A moderation technique in which participants are instructed to conceptualize the product or service on a two-dimensional scale, such as price and quality. The goal is to better understand the participants' feelings about the product or service.

Attitudinal scaling is used to quantify and analyze the attitudes, opinions or perceptions of the respondent toward specific subjects or objects. As the name of the study suggests, attitudinal studies involve respondents assigning number values to responses on a scale. In many instances, scales range from strongly disagree to strongly agree or from low to high, thus allowing respondents to illustrate the degrees of their opinions and attitudes. The scaling provides researchers with insights that might not be available through qualitative measure. Attitudinal scaling provides insight into societal trends, patterns and correlations, thus providing users of the data to construct more accurate predictions and take part in more informed decision making. Attitudinal scaling permits more comparison between subjective and objective analysis.

Who relies on attitudinal scaling?

Professionals and researchers across various fields, including marketing researchers, social scientists, psychologists, educators and policymakers, rely on attitudinal scaling. One example is marketing researchers, who utilize study findings to gauge consumer preferences and perceptions. Also, social scientists use scaling to understand public opinion on social issues. What’s more, psychologists use data to measure attitudes in clinical settings. And finally, educators use findings to assess student attitudes towards learning.

Why should I care about attitudinal scaling?

Business people, policymakers and students seeking to understand the attitudes of particular groups of people rely on information gathered through attitudinal studies to guide marketing campaigns, product designs and political movements. Attitudinal scaling provides a structured framework to measure the public attitudes,  thus enabling entities to be more precise with their insights into consumer opinions and preferences.