Survey and Scale
Building Valid Scale Scores: Reverse Items, Missing Responses and Subscales
Code Likert items according to the instrument manual, including reverse scoring, missing responses, composite scores and reliability.
Admin
June 20, 2026
8 min read
Item coding must be validated before analysis
A single Likert item is ordinal; a validated multi-item score may behave differently. Follow the instrument manual.
Practical framework
Code options consistently.
Verify reverse scoring.
Prespecify missing-item rules.
Respect validated subscales.
Reporting
Report item range, reversed items, missing rules and score direction.
Common mistakes
Forgetting reverse items.
Deleting items only to raise alpha.
Automatically treating one item as continuous.
References
Accessed 20 June 2026. General methodological information.