The Fuzziness of Verbal Response Scales: The STAI-T Questionnaire

In this paper we used a two-step procedure for the numerical translation of verbal frequency expressions of the response scale of a questionnaire (STAI-T). In an empirical study, 70 participants estimated numerical equivalents for verbal frequency expressions, data was modeled, and fuzzy membership functions were calculated. Results show that the scale’s visual arrangement does not influence the interpretation of the words’ meanings. We argue that traditional statistics are inappropriate for the analysis of verbal response data and demonstrate the alternative of fuzzy analysis, providing an example.