Rensis Likert

Rensis Likert (1903 to 1981) was an American organizational and social psychologist known for developing the Likert scale, a way of measuring attitudes and feelings from responses to several questions that is now used in opinion surveys and personality tests. Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he began in civil engineering, switched to economics and sociology at the University of Michigan, and took his doctorate in psychology at Columbia, where his 1932 dissertation set out the scale. He directed research for the Life Insurance Agency Management Association, headed the morale division of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey during the Second World War, and later founded Rensis Likert Associates to consult for corporations. In the 1950s he described four management systems, and his work on participative management, conflict and research sampling shaped social and organizational psychology.