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Concept
Semantic differential
Summary
The semantic differential (SD) is a measurement scale designed to measure a person's subjective perception of, and affective reactions to, the properties of concepts, objects, and events by making use of a set of bipolar scales. The SD is used to assess one's opinions, attitudes, and values regarding these concepts, objects, and events in a controlled and valid way. Respondents are asked to choose where their position lies, on a set of scales with polar adjectives (for example: "sweet - bitter", "fair - unfair", "warm - cold"). Compared to other measurement scaling techniques such as Likert scaling, the SD can be assumed to be relatively reliable, valid, and robust.
The SD has been used in both a general and a more specific way. Charles E. Osgood's theory of the semantic differential exemplifies the more general attempt to measure the semantics, or meaning, of words, particularly adjectives, and their referent concepts. In fields such as marketing, psychology, sociology, and information systems, the SD is used to measure the subjective perception of, and affective reactions to, more specific concepts such as marketing communication, political candidates, alcoholic beverages, and websites.
Verhagen and colleagues introduce a framework to assist researchers in applying the semantic differential. The framework, which consists of six subsequent steps, advocates particular attention for collecting the set of relevant bipolar scales, linguistic testing of semantic bipolarity, and establishing semantic differential dimensionality.
A detailed presentation on the development of the semantic differential is provided in Cross-Cultural Universals of Affective Meaning. David R. Heise's Surveying Cultures provides a contemporary update with special attention to measurement issues when using computerized graphic rating scales.
One possible problem with this scale is that its psychometric properties and level of measurement are disputed. The most general approach is to treat it as an ordinal scale, but it can be argued that the neutral response (i.
Official source
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