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.
You should not use this form of question (or at least not call it a Likert scale) when the items in the question are unrelated to each other, or when the options are not presented in the form of a scale. As with all other rating and scale questions, we encourage you not to mix scales within your surveys.