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I'm designing a questionnaire to measure the preferences of Chinese learners, in terms of how they learn Chinese characters. The original questionnaire gave users eleven items, and each item was a pair of converse statements about learning preferences, which users were asked to pick between. For example:

  • Practising character writing is more effective than reading a character text, for my character learning.

  • Reading a character text is more effective than practising character writing, for my character learning.

This was problematic for a number of reasons, so I elected to use a Likert scale instead. My problem is, if I pick either one of the statements, and give users a five-point Likert scale asking them to agree/disagree, strongly agree/disagree or neutral, then users may be biased towards the first option.

My alternatives are, to present both statements, with a Likert scale for each, as in:

  • Practising character writing is more effective than reading a character text, for my character learning.

    • Strongly Agree
    • Agree
    • Neutral
    • Disagree
    • Strongly Disagree

  • Reading a character text is more effective than practising character writing, for my character learning.

    • Strongly Agree
    • Agree
    • Neutral
    • Disagree
    • Strongly Disagree

Or, to present only one statement, but refine the answers to reflect the gradations between the two choices:

  • Practising character writing is more effective than reading a character text, for my character learning.
    • Writing is always more effective
    • Writing is sometimes more effective
    • Both approaches are equally effective
    • Reading is sometimes more effective
    • Reading is always more effective

I'm not sure what the normal practice is though, in designing this type of questionnaire. Is there a common practice for using Likert scales to pick between two preferential options?

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  • $\begingroup$ Also, if there is a more appropriate SE for this, please let me know, rather than leaving a close-vote without comment. This seemed like the best one at the time. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 11, 2018 at 12:30

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Tried to post comment, but it was too long, so I will post it here.

Is it important that they directly compare these two? If not, another option would be two items like this:

(1) To what extent is character writing effective for my character learning?

1=Very ineffective to 5=Very Effective

(2) To what extent is reading a character text effective for my character learning?

1=Very ineffective to 5=Very Effective

With this approach you have independent assessments of each which could then be compared directly if needed via t-test or equivalent if you prefer not to use t-tests for Likert-type items.

As another comparison, I would state it simply like this:

(3) Which is more effective for my character learning, character writing or character reading?

___ character reading

___ character writing

___ both equally effective (another possible response option)

They select one or the other; this approach allows you to find the proportion or percentage preference between the two.

Including all three items would enable a validity check by comparing responses to item 3 against the comparison of items 1 and 2 - hopefully the two analyses will lead to similar conclusions.

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  • $\begingroup$ I like both ideas, they seem neater than my own solutions. I'll wait to see if other users have opinions to weigh in as well. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 11, 2018 at 14:35

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