Likert Scale questionnaire

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Hi,

I'm researching for my thesis and my primary research will be collected through a questionnaire.

I don't know if this is the right forum because I'm studying business but I figure people in her will have experience with this sort of stuff hopefully.

My thesis mentor says that in a questionnaire you should phrase the question as a question.

Q1. Do you feel that potato cakes are nice?

but I want to phrase it as a statement

Q1. You feel that potato cakes are nice.

The reason he believes the first one is because otherwise you are leading people.

However, with a likert scale as follows...

Strongly Agree - Agree - Neither agree nor disagree - Disagree -Strongly Disagree

...using a statement is not leading because of the multitude of options.

If i was to use...

yes - no

...as my two answer options then i would feel it would be leading but with my likert scale I don't think so.

Does anyone agree or disagree. Can you give me your reasons.

Thanks

Ostrom

Likert scales are reliability tested, and generally the former are used where you offer a statement. The statement isn't considered leading in this sense - what would cause problems are negative phrasings in the statement. It is better to use the scale as opposed to yes/no as the likert scale may be treated as an interval variable, leaving you open to a number of more powerful procedures. You could also use the semantic differential or horizontal rating with some rethinking of the question, or substitute the 'agree' with another suitable term in the likert. Most social science survey texts will discuss experimental reliability testing in likert scales so this use of it is justified. You just need to take care to make sure you dont have some sort of qualifier in the question

Ostrom

Sorry, that wasn't clear at all in what i said Your way is the preferred - unless you can formulate some sort of balanced set of choices from the question in the way your supervisor says, but this would be unusual.