RITEE COLLEGE OF NURSING,

RAIpUR (C.G.)

SESSION:-2022-2023
SUBJECT - Nursing education
Clinical Evaluation Tool
On
DIFFRENTIAL SCALE

Submitted to:
Submitted By:
MRS. PRIYANKA DAS MR. SANJAY
PATEL
ASSISTANT PROFFESOR MSC
NURSING 1ST Year
RITCON RITCON
 DIFFERENTIAL SCALE

Introduction -:

The name L.L. Thurstone is associated with differential scales, which have been
developed using consensus scale approach. Under such approach the selection of items is made by
a panel of judge who evaluate that item, of whether they are relevant to the topic area and
unambiguous in implication. Ratings are basically “oscillating” to the extent that they specify two
adverse concepts of a continuity (fast-slow, good-bad, high-low). Questionnaires that use the
Semantic Scale are considered to be a very reliable way to get information on people’s emotional
reactions when it comes to a wide variety of subjects. For instance, you can measure customers’
attitudes towards a new product launching on the market or employees’ level of satisfaction.

Definition -: Charles E. Osgood

“This are known as equal appearing interval scales. They ate used to measure the attitude
towards a given concept or construct. For this purpose a large number of statements are collected
that relate to the concept or construct being measured.”

“ Se
mantic Differential (SD) is a type of a rating scale designed to measure the
connotative meaning of objects, events, and concepts. The connotations are used to derive the
attitude towards the given object, event or concept.”

“The Semantic Differential Scale is a seven-point rating scale used to derive the respondent's
attitude towards the given object or event by asking him to select an appropriate position on a
scale between two bipolar adjectives (such as “warm” or “cold”, “powerful” or “weak”, etc.)

Procedure:

 The researcher gathers a large number of statements, usually 20 or more, that express
various points of view a group, institution, idea or practice.
 The statements are then submitted to panel of judge (normally about 50-300) each of
whom arranges them in eleven groups or piles ranging from one extreme to another in
position.
 This sorting of each judgements yield a composite position for each of the items. In case
of marked disagreement between the judges in assigning a position to an item, the item is
discarded.
 For item retained, each is given its median scale value between one and eleven as
estimated by the panel.
 The final selection of statement is then made. Here median score spread evenly from one
extreme to the other are taken.

Semantic diffrential scales example -

 Clean ------- -------- --------- -------- --------- ---------- ------------ Dirty

  Bright -------- -------- --------- --------- ---------- ----------- -------------- Dark
 Low quality ---------- -------- --------- --------- ----------- ------------------- High
quality
 Conservative ------------- -------------- -------------- ----------- ---------- Innovative
 Inconvenient ------------ ---------------- -------------- ------------ -----------
Convenient

Use of adjectives -:

 The development of this instrument provides an interesting insight into the border area
between linguistic and psychology. People have been describing since they developed the
ability to speak.
 Most objective can also be used as personality descriptors. The occurrences of thousand
adjectives in English are an attestation of the subtleties in descriptions of persons and
their behaviour available to speakers of English.
 Roget’s Thesaurus is an early attempt to classify most adjectives into categories and was
used within this context to reduce the number of adjectives to manageable subsets,
suitable for factor analysis.

Usage -:

 The semantic differential is today one of the most widely used scales used in
measurement of attitudes. One of the reasons is the versatility of the items. The bipolar
 objectives pairs can be used for a wide variety such as scale is nicknamed “the ever ready
battery” of the attitude researcher.
 A specific form of the SD, projective Semantics method uses only most common and
neutral nouns that corresponds to the 7 groups (factors) of adjectives-scales most
consistently found in cross-cultural studies (Evaluation Potency, Activity as found by
Osgood, and Reality , Organization, Complexity, Limitation as found in other studies).
 In this method was thought to have the object-scale symmetry (OSS) between the schools
and nouns for evaluation using the scales. For example, the nouns corresponding to the
listed 7 factors would be: Beauty power, motion, life, work, chaos. Beauty was expected
to be assessed unequivocally as “very good” on objectives of evaluation related scales.
Life is very real in reality –related scales etc.
 However deviations in this symmetric are very basic matrix might show underlying
biases of two types: scales-related bias and objects related bias. This OSS design had
meant to increase the sensitivity.

Advantages and disadvantages -

Advantages -

1. Easy for Respondents to Take - The main profit of using the Semantic Differential Scale
is the simplicity of understanding the scale by responders. Almost every person has ever
encountered this type of survey. Due to a scale connecting extremely opposite adjectives,
the respondents can more specifically express their opinions with the help of specific
measurements.

2. Gives an Objective Picture -As the Semantic Differential Scale questionnaires are pretty
easy to take, respondents may express their opinion in full. That helps the results to be as
accurate and statistically significant as they can be.

3. Simple for the Interviewer to Make -Saving time is important, so another advantage
consists of the fact that the interviewer only needs to find two opposite terms to use it a
measuring tool for a survey to work. Plenty of online services help to find a good
synonym definitely check them out! To construct an equivalent differences scale this
method is best. Examples to measure the attitudes towards various issues like, war,
religion etc.
4. The scale is considered as most appropriate and reliable for measuring a single attitude.
5. If we follow the rules of construction and selecting items, the technique will provide a
very close approximation of an interval measurement.

Disadvantages -:

 The entire procedure is relatively time consuming and requires a form of at least 20 rates.
 It is expensive and effort is required to develop it
 Weakness of such scales is the values assigned to various statements by the judges may
reflect their own attitudes
 It is not completely objective

Conclusion –

A semantic differential scale, or Likert scale (1932), is a range of values describing an

attribute. Each value on the scale represents a different level of that attribute. The most extreme
value in each direction on the scale is called an anchor. The scale is then divided, usually in equal
divisions, with points between the anchors that divide up the difference between the meanings of
the two anchors of the SD method to any semantic biases in responses of people within the same
culture and educational background.

Bibliography -

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