Having viewed some of the highly edited videotaped material of Terri Schiavo and having seen other patients in a persistent vegetative state, I am not surprised that family members and others unfamiliar with this condition would interpret some of her apparent alertness and movement as meaningful.
A Likert Scale is a type of psychometric scale frequently used in psychology questionnaires. It was developed by and named after organizational psychologist Rensis Likert. Self-report inventories are one of the most widely used tools in psychological research.
A general and important guideline is that the statistics based on one level of measurement. should not be used for a lower level, but can be used for a higher level. An implication of. this guideline is that data obtained from using a Likert-type scale (a scale in which people. set their preferences from say 1 = totally agree to 7 = totally disagree) should, generally, not be used in parametric tests.