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.
Item Selection. I think the point about item selection in a Likert scale is absolutely fundamental to how these scales should be constructed. Items in a Likert scale should be selected on the basis that they are likely to lead to extreme responses from people with attitudes at the extremes of what is being measured.