Making sense of survey data is overwhelming and time-consuming.
Why?
Survey data is complex and may involve both textual and numerical information. And this calls for a change in strategy, especially during the data visualization phase.
This is where specialized survey tools, such as the Likert Scale, come in. Likert Scale can help your business extract actionable insights from survey data without consuming much time.
There’re two key types of Likert Scale, namely:
Google Sheets lack survey visualization charts with the Likert Scale.
You don’t have to ditch your Google Sheets in favor of other costly tools in the market.
You can improve your Google Sheets by installing third-party apps (add-ons). This will enable you to access ready-made and easy-to-use survey charts.
In this blog, you’ll learn:
Before delving right into the blog’s core theme, we’ll address the following question: What is a Likert Scale?
Likert Scale is a psychometric (test designed to show someone’s personality, opinions, etc.) scale which can help you understand the views and perspectives of the market towards your brand. The Likert Scale comes in different variants to help your business personalize its communication, among other benefits.
Besides, it measures the qualitative data (opinions and sentiments) by categorically assigning value. In other words, responses are measured based on their disagreement or agreement level.
The Likert Scale is based on the rationale that the strength and intensity of the respondents’ answers are linear. More so, they can be measured on a scale ranging from a complete agreement to a complete disagreement. You can use a wide variety of topics (general and specific questions) to probe respondents about their level of agreement, perceptions, or beliefs toward your brand.
In 1932, Rensis Likert, a psychologist interested in measuring people’s opinions or attitudes on a variety of items, developed the original Likert Scale.
The difference between a proper scale and Likert Scale types is that the latter distinguishes between the underlying phenomenon and the means by which the variation is captured.
Also, it assumes that the distance between each choice/option is equal.
Questions should be easily related to the sentence’s answers, regardless of whether the relationship between the item and sentence is evident.
Survey participants’ responses should always have two extreme positions and an intermediate option that serves as the bridge.
The more items on the Likert Scale, the higher the reliability of insights produced.
You can augment your chart to a seven-point Likert Scale by adding “very” to both extremes of a five-point chart. A larger scale improves the reliability of your results drastically.
You can work with only even values by eliminating the “neutral” possibility in your Likert Scale types.
In the next section, we’ll cover the following: when to use a Likert Scale.
You’ll agree when we say measuring and analyzing the quality of products or services using the market perspective is increasingly becoming a norm.
The Likert Scale types (which we’ll cover later on) are increasingly helping businesses like yours understand their niche markets in-depth. Essentially, you can use a scale to analyze responses (opinions, beliefs, and sentiments) from a just-concluded survey exercise.
Besides, you can empower your potential customers to decide how your products and services can best serve their needs.
How?
You can achieve the aforementioned by having them provide their honest opinion (data) about the critical issues they feel you should address, such as the quality of a product/service, customer service, price, etc.
We recommend you try all the key Likert Scale types and note differences in insights.
Wait, there’s more!
You can use the Likert Scale to visualize different types of raw survey data using a variety of scales, namely: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.
Keep reading because in the coming section, we’ll address the key types of the Likert Scale and how you can use them.
The Likert Scale is increasingly becoming a must-have tool for businesses like yours when it comes to collecting critical insights, such as customer satisfaction or employee experience.
This highly insightful chart for survey data analysis comes in two major types, namely:
Researchers use even Likert scales to collect extreme feedback without providing a neutral option.
The 2-point Likert Scale type is one of the simplest scales you can work with. It’s made up of questions with two choices.
A 4-point Likert Scale is made of questions providing respondents with 4 choices. You’re likely to get 4 varying opinions of the same question.
A 6-point Likert Scale is made of questions providing respondents with 6 choices, as shown above. You’re likely to get 6 varying opinions of the same question.
This Likert Scale type displays extreme options for respondents. Besides, it comes without a neutral choice.
A 10-point Likert Scale is made of questions providing respondents with 10 choices, as shown above. Besides, it displays extreme options for the underlying question.
This scale chart has extreme ends and a neutral option (a gray area). It provides respondents with 3 options in a single question.
A 5-point Likert Scale is made of questions providing respondents with 5 choices, as shown above. Besides, it has a neutral option (a gray area).
The 7-point Likert Scale is an upgrade to the 5-point Scale. It offers 7 options in a single question. Also, it has a neutral option.
This Likert Scale type is an upgrade to the 7-Point Scale. It offers 9 options in a single question. Also, it has a neutral option.
In the coming section, we’ll address how to create a Likert Scale in Google Sheets.
Google Sheets is a trusted data visualization tool because it’s familiar and has been there for years.
But the spreadsheet application lacks ready-made Likert Scale types.
We understand switching tools is not an easy task.
Therefore, we’re not advocating you ditch Google Sheets in favor of other expensive data visualization tools.
There’s an easy-to-use and amazingly affordable visualization tool that comes as an add-on you can easily install in your Google Sheets ready-made Likert Scale type. The tool is called ChartExpo.
So, what is ChartExpo?
ChartExpo is an incredibly intuitive add-on you can easily install in your Google Sheets without watching hours of YouTube tutorials.
With many ready-to-go visualizations, ChartExpo turns your complex, raw data into insightful charts that tell the data stories in real-time.
In the coming section, we’ll take you through how to install and use ChartExpo into your Google Sheets to use it as Likert Scale creator.
You don’t want to miss this!
This section will use a Likert Scale Chart to visualize the tabular data below.
| Questions | Scale | Responses |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff behavior? | 1 | 229 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff behavior? | 2 | 76 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff behavior? | 3 | 110 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff behavior? | 4 | 50 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff behavior? | 5 | 150 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff behavior? | 6 | 167 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff behavior? | 7 | 224 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff behavior? | 8 | 170 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff behavior? | 9 | 10 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff behavior? | 10 | 147 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 1 | 71 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 2 | 73 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 3 | 85 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 4 | 238 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 5 | 91 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 6 | 152 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 7 | 51 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 8 | 18 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 9 | 20 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 10 | 148 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 1 | 233 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 2 | 46 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 3 | 144 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 4 | 246 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 5 | 129 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 6 | 126 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 7 | 234 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 8 | 228 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 9 | 182 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 10 | 190 |
To install the Likert Scale Generator (ChartExpo), add-on for Google Sheets, click this link.
A Likert Scale is a bi-polar scale you can use to collect the attitudes and opinions of your target market.
The psychometric scale can help you understand the target market’s views and perspectives towards your brand. The Likert Scales come in different variants, such as the 5-point, 6-point, etc.
There’s no one superior Likert Scale type. All the variants have a role to play depending on your needs.
If your goal is to provide a neutral option in your survey, use an Odd Likert Scale type. If your goal is to do away with neutral responses, use an Even Likert Scale type.
Making sense of survey data is complex and time-consuming.
Why?
Survey data is complex and may involve both textual and numerical information. And this calls for a change in strategy, especially during the data visualization phase.
This is where specialized survey tools, such as the Likert Scale, come in. Likert Scale is one of the many charts tailor-made specifically to help your business extract actionable insights from survey data without consuming much time.
There’re two key types of Likert Scale, namely:
Yes, you read that right.
Google Sheets lack survey visualization charts with the Likert Scale.
You don’t have to ditch your Google Sheets in favor of other costly tools in the market.
So, what’s the solution?
We recommend you install third-party apps, such as ChartExpo, to access ready-to-use Likert Scale types.
ChartExpo is an add-on for Google Sheets that’s loaded with an insightful and ready-to-go Likert Scale. You don’t need programming or coding skills to use ChartExpo.
Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to access ready-made Likert Scale types that are easy to interpret and visually appealing to your target audience.
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