Hypothesis testing-based comparative analysis between rating scales for intrinsically imprecise data

This paper aims to perform a joint comparison in such a way that means of linked data (one associated with the fuzzy rating and the other one with the encoded Likert scale) are to be tested for equality. Two real-life examples, as well as several simulation-based synthetic ones, have unequivocally shown that the fuzzy rating scale means are significantly different from those for the encoded Likert scales.