ArticlePsychonomic bulletin & review2018
A Bayesian perspective on Likert scales and central tendency.
Article in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evaluating women's experiences and satisfaction with labour induction in India: a comparison of the participant generated experience and satisfaction (PaGES) index with standard methods.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2025Trial
- Assessment of life support skills of resident dentists using OSCE: cross-sectional survey.BMC medical education · 2022Trial
- The impacts of high refractive errors on self-reported visual function and visual concern.Acta ophthalmologica · 2026Article
- The Game of Self: Identity and Experience as Active Inference.Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc · 2026Article
- Multidisciplinary Delphi consensus statement on minimal standards for clinical metadata and end points in microbiome studies.Nature reviews. Gastroenterology & hepatology · 2026Review
- Still very much dead and alive: Incoherence in conspiracism as a departure from Bayesian rationality.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Perceiving material qualities from moving contours.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Transition to electronic prescriptions in pharmacies: Workflows, services, and access to medication - A mixed methods approach.Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy · 2026Article
- Enhancing Patient-Centered Health Technology Assessment: A Modified Delphi Panel for PICOS Scoping in Spinal Muscular Atrophy.Journal of market access & health policy · 2026Article
- Pitch accent speakers exhibit speech-to-song transformation accompanied by reduced musicality ratings: a cross-linguistic study.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Assessment of China's food and nutrition policies based on healthy food environment policy index (food-EPI): focusing on governance, funding and resources, platforms for interaction.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Workers' satisfaction with health surveillance: Development and validation of a new scale.International journal of nursing studies advances · 2025Article
- Patient Satisfaction Measurement: A Comparison of Likert and Item-Specific Response Options Scales.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Insights into the Datasets, Tools, and Training Needs of the AnVIL Community: 2024.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- When Fairness Backfires: How Organizational Justice Amplifies the Strain of Leader-Member Exchange Ambivalence.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Fruit Consumption Habits and Apple Preferences of University Students in Poland.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Ethically Translating Advanced Neurotechnologies for Disorders of Consciousness: A Survey of Clinicians' Perspectives.Neurocritical care · 2025Article
- The effect of centrality bias on triage nurses in the emergency department.SAGE open medicine · 2025Article
- Safety Climate Transformation in Oil and Gas Company Ownership Transition (Study Case from Multinational to National Company).Safety and health at work · 2024Article
- Exploring the Ability of Educators to Identify Behaviors Indicative of Emerging Psychopathologies in Elementary School Students: Assessing the Use of a Novel Vignette Measure.Canadian journal of school psychology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The central tendency bias is a robust finding in data from experiments using Likert scales to elicit responses. The present paper offers a Bayesian perspective on this bias, explaining it as a natural outcome of how participants provide point estimates of probability distributions over the items on a Likert scale. Two studies are reported that support this Bayesian explanation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
28752379What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.