On the dimensionality of two-question format Likert attitude scales

Previous research indicates that Likert items do not result in unidimensional ordinal. rating scales nor do they consistently permit the separation of Content and Intensity dimensions. An alternative strategy is to present a separate Content (agree or disagree) item immediately followed by an Intensity (strongly or not strongly) item. Panel data from the 1992 and 1994 American National Election Studies are used to study this strategy. The results indicate that Content and Intensity are sometimes confounded with the two-part questions, and also that the joint responses to the Content and Intensity questions do not generally constitute a unidimensional scale. (C) 1997 Academic Press.