Self-esteem refers to the confidence people have in their abilities. In this respect, it reflects the emotion of a person when making important decisions and significantly determines the success rate. Individuals with a low level of self-esteem commonly feel depressed or defeated and might portray a negative attitude (McLeod, 2008). As such, they can get involved in destructive relationships that ruin their lives. On the other hand, extremely high level of self-esteem is harmful since it makes an individual overconfident. As a result, people should balance their level of self-worth so that they can remain positive when making crucial decisions.
The type of response I would recommend to use when creating a Likert scale is the intensity versus frequency. In particular, this multi-categorical approach enables an individual to choose the most appropriate level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Kline, 2005). Based on this response format, for instance, doctors may ask patients how often they experience headaches. On that note, sick people should respond depending on the intensity or frequency of pain.
The approach I would use to construct the Likert scale is the nomothetic assessment. As such, the process involves using scores to compare one person with another. For example, 1-5 scale enables individuals to either “strongly agree” or “strongly disagree” to specific questions (Nemoto " Beglar, 2014). Interviewers can classify people into different groups depending on the scale they choose on the Likert scale. However, one must ensure that the questions asked have a distinctive intensity or rate of satisfaction.
The new self-esteem scale would involve five items. They should be classified from 1-5 where "1=strongly disagree," "2-disagree," "3=neutral," "4=agree," and "5=strongly agree." A Likert scale with five items enables people to choose the level of satisfaction by just selecting a number (Nemoto " Beglar, 2014). Overall, Likert scales fosters data collection in an organised manner that makes it easy for analysis.
References
Kline, T. J. B. (2005). Psychological testing: A practical approach to design and evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
McLeod, S. (2008). Likert Scale. Simple Psychology. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/likert-scale.html.
Nemoto, T., " Beglar, D. (2014). Developing Likert-scale questionnaires. Temple University.