So a subject might say that professors reasonably extend from 10 to 6 and in laziness from 10 to 1. A straightforward way is simply to ask what percentage of people in the group have the trait in question. A fourth method that requires a little more care by subjects and a lot more calculation is to give subjects a scale and ask them what percentage of the group fall at each point. There are several ways of calculating homogeneity from the above kind of distribution measure. All you need do is to sum the squares of the percentages assigned to each category and subtract that sum from 1.
Low numbers mean that the distribution is fairly homogeneous.
In practice the measure will tend to hover in the .70-.80 range, so relatively small differences may be important. The above measure can also produce a mean without your having to ask directly for a mean. The formula for this is simply the sum of the percentages times the scale values. Running Subjects You will need to prepare questionnaires and give them to at least 5 people from each of the groups. Obviously it will not take much time for the subjects to fill out the questionnaires.