The cumulative scale or Guttman scale measures to what degree a person has a positive or negative attitude to something. It makes use of a series of statements that are growing or descending in how positive or negative a person is towards the subject. If for instance on a scale with seven statements the respondent agrees with the fifth statement, it implies that he or she also agrees with the first four statements, but not with statement number six and seven.
To create a Guttman scale, you need to:
For a detailed example, see http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/scalgutt.php
You can now use the scale to measure attitudes 'in the field': enter the list of statements and use them to interview people or present them in a document. For each item, they should express whether they agree or disagree. Each scale item has a scale value associated with it (obtained from the scalogram analysis). To compute a respondent's scale score we simply sum the scale values of every item they agree with.
When you set the Question type to 'Cumulative scale (Guttman)', you will get an empty table with the usual 'Labels' column, and two classes: 'Agree' and 'Disagree'. You can change the headers of these columns any way you want, but make sure that the second column remains the favourable option and the last column the unfavourable option.
To change the column headers, click somewhere in the column, and then on the button. You can also double-click on the column header itself. This will make a text field appear, where you can modify the header of this column.
To add the statements that make up your scale, go to the first row and enter them in the 'Label' column.
Every time you add a statement, you will see a '1' appear in the 'Agree' column (second column). If you want, you can modify this score but you can only modify the value in the 'Agree' column and not in the 'Disagree' column.