Why Do I always respond ‘Neutral’? And is that really a response at all?
These questions were brought to mind by the test development project in this class. During this project I, and many of my classmates, decided to use a Likert scale as part of our test. When I began to fill out my classmates’ tests, I found that when the test contained a Likert scale, I almost always selected the ‘neutral’ option or the option closest to middle of the two extremes. I even sometimes went so far as counting the number of bubbles to find the very middle option. I didn’t think much of my doing this, until I saw from my own results that few others seemed to respond in this way. Few people who took my test consistently chose neutral and some people didn’t chose neutral or close to neutral, even once.
I have started to ask myself why I do this. What is it that draws me to the ‘neutral’ response? Am I indecisive? — Can I not decide whether I agree or disagree, so to avoid confusion I just go with ‘neutral’? Do I not know myself and my own opinions? — Do I give the answer ‘neutral’ because in actual fact I don’t know how I feel? Am I scared of commitment? — Do I not want to commit myself to saying that I agree with something on paper? Maybe I don’t want to admit something to myself — maybe I’m ashamed of my response and so it’s easier to say I’m neutral. Or maybe I just simply don’t care. It’s possible that at 8.30am on a Monday morning, filling out a test about my political views or my attitude towards homework is the last thing I want to do and so I select neutral because it’s easy. In all honesty I don’t know why I select neutral, it just feels safe.
But is Neutral a real response? And more importantly is it a helpful one? Opinion wise it could be — I could detest both apples and oranges so respond ‘neutral’ to the statement “I prefer apples to oranges” because I don’t prefer either so I don’t agree or disagree. In other cases however I don’t think it’s either — responding ‘neutral’ to the statement “I always hand my homework in on time” doesn’t make sense because either you do, or you don’t. The researcher gains no insight at all, by a neutral response to this kind of question.
What if ‘neutral’ didn’t exist and we were forced to make a choice? This could go two possible ways. We could be forced to make an incorrect/dishonest choice because our real choice — ‘neutral’ — doesn’t exist. I could be forced to say I prefer apples to oranges even though I don’t because the option to say I prefer neither doesn’t exist. Or, it could enhance our test results because rather than people like me taking the easy way out, they would be forced to say how they actually feel about the construct we are trying to measure.
I understand that the concept of forced choice responding may not always be appropriate for every test, but where it is I think we should abolish the ‘neutral’ option and force test takers to make a choice. As long as we maintain the degrees of extremity in the scale, the participants will be able to show the strength or weakness of their opinion but will just have to show that they do have an opinion. Ethically I see no issues with this, if a participant doesn’t want to give an honest answer about a particular question they always have the right to withdraw from the test. All considered, I feel that if we made this change, it would make both the testing procedure and our results a lot more valuable and interesting.
