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.
Named after Rensis Likert, a Likert scale is a measurement device that requires people to indicate the extent to which they agree to several statements. The range of options in Likert scales are ordinal, which means that while they are ranked, the distance between two options is not necessarily equal.