Descriptive analysis of responses to items in questionnaires. Why not using a fuzzy rating scale?

In evaluating aspects like quality perception, satisfaction or attitude which are intrinsically imprecise, the fuzzy rating scale has been introduced as a psychometric tool that allows evaluators to give flexible and quite accurate, albeit non numerical, ratings. The fuzzy rating scale integrates the skills associated with the visual analogue scale, because of the total freedom in assessing ratings, with the ability of fuzzy linguistic variables to capture the natural imprecision in evaluating such aspects. Thanks to a recent methodology, the descriptive analysis of the responses to a fuzzy rating scale-based questionnaire can be now carried out. This paper aims to illustrate such an analysis through a real-life example, as well as to show that statistical conclusions can often be rather different from the conclusions one could get from either Likert scale based responses or their fuzzy linguistic encoding. This difference encourages the use of the fuzzy rating scale when statistical conclusions are important, similarly to the use of exact real-valued data instead of grouping them. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.