When conducting a survey, respondents may need to rate their opinion or degree of satisfaction with a particular product or service.
To perform this objectively, you’ve got to use different rating scale questions in your survey.
With rating scale examples, you can easily quantify your audience’s feelings and opinion in terms of specified values in numbers.
A rating scale is one of the proven question types for online and offline surveys. Your audience can use the scale to rate an attribute or feature of your service or product.
Let’s assume you’ve used rating scale examples to gather data for further analysis.
How do you extract answers from the data?
This is where charts with rating scales, such as Likert, come in.
A Likert Scale Chart has choices ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ to help you get a bird’s eye view of your audience’s opinions and level of agreement.
Also, it’s straightforward to read and interpret a Likert Scale Chart, as you shall see later.
A rating scale is a form of closed-ended survey question you can use to capture responses in numerical form.
For instance, it could be survey questions asking your target audience to rate your service or product.
How would you rate our products or services on a scale of 1 (worst) to 5 (excellent)?
Rating scale examples are mostly made up of multiple-choice questions to gather in-depth responses for further analysis.
Use a rating scale to associate a qualitative measure with a product’s key aspects. Some of the areas a rating scale comes in handy include evaluating the performance of:
In the coming section, we’ll take you through types of rating scales.
Let’s dive in.
We have 4 primary types of rating scales you can use to put together a survey.
Let’s check them out.
A graphic rating scale shows the answer options on a scale.
It could be 1 to 5, 1 to 7, etc. In other words, your target audience has multiple answer options to select from.
Check out the example of graphic rating scale below.
How satisfied are you with the pricing of our services?
1 = Highly Dissatisfied
2 = Dissatisfied
3 = Neutral
4 = Satisfied
5 = Highly Satisfied
The question above is a 5-point rating scale example.
The numerical rating scale uses numbers as answer options. Essentially, your target respondents will be provided with numbers as options to select from.
Check out an example of numerical rating scale below.
On a scale of 1 (absolutely disaster) to 10 (Wow. I am in love with the product), how would you rate our latest product?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
In a descriptive rating scale, respondents are provided with an option to elaborate their responses.
For instance, how would you rate our services?
As the name suggests, a comparative rating scale provides your target audience with an option to answer a survey question by comparing one attribute against another.
In the coming section, we’ll show you how to craft rating scale questions.
Also, we’ll provide rating scale examples to get you started as quickly as possible.
In this section, we’ll cover the best practices that survey gurus use to create a goal-driven survey.
Probably the critical part of a rating scale survey is creating questions that accurately measure:
You’re likely to gather distorted and unreliable data if you have a shaky foundation of ambiguous or biased questions.
We recommend you keep many elements in mind when drafting survey questions.
You first need to consider the wording of your rating scale questions. And this is because it’s closely related to the data you’re collecting.
Secondly, be mindful of your target respondents and how to best engage them.
Crafting rating scale questions is an art.
It calls for elements of psychology, writing skills, and marketing.
Gathering accurate responses involves writing good questions and organizing them to form a goal-driven survey.
Creating rating scale example questions is a multistage process that requires attention to multiple details. Furthermore, this process can be complicated because a survey can be applied in multiple areas of your business.
Different rating scale surveys come with varying degrees of detail. More so, questions can be asked in different ways. Also, questions asked earlier in a survey may influence how your audience responds to other questions.
We recommend you conduct pilot tests or focus groups in the early stages of developing rating scale questions.
Why?
To better understand how your target audience will perceive or understand your questionnaire.
Pretesting a survey is critical in optimizing the process to increase participation and completion rates.
We’ve put together more tips you can use to create goal-focused product survey questions.
Your rating scale questions should be concise and easy to understand.
In other words, avoid double negatives or ambiguous wording.
For instance, avoid asking:
“Do you agree our new product line is not unhelpful?”
These question types may mislead your target respondents. Your language should also be appropriate to improve readability.
Craft questions with an average seventh-grade reading level to ensure everyone can understand. Issues such as ambiguity and jargon can confuse or alienate your audience.
We recommend you avoid putting an opinion or something that reflects your sentiments in your online survey questionnaires.
Look at the example below.
“We believe our new product is remarkable.”
How remarkable do you think our product is?
This question seems to pass an opinion you want your target audience to agree with.
How do you know if respondents feel your product is remarkable?
Such rating scale questions will distort the resulting insights.
Create neutral and objective questions.
We recommend you use questions that are balanced and neutral.
Remember, people need a balanced questionnaire to provide honest and objective responses.
Look at the examples below.
How balanced are these rating scale example questions?
Notice there’s no opportunity for respondents to express their disappointments using words such as angry and sad.
Goal-focused questions use an objective tone.
Notice the difference after adding negative choices for balance.
Each rating scale example question should give room for one answer.
Anything more than this can confuse your respondents. Confusing respondents is unethical and may distort your overall findings.
Why?
Your target audience may choose an answer that doesn’t reflect their true feelings.
Check out an example of a double-barreled question below.
“How would you rate our new course and our main trainer?
What’s the problem with the question above?
The new course and the trainer are two distinct themes. Squeezing two varying themes in the same question can push your audience to either address one or skip the question.
We recommend you break these question types into two for comprehensive and in-depth responses.
For instance:
This approach can help you uncover critical areas you’re failing.
Ask more closed-ended questions in your survey.
Why?
To gather analyzable data, use closed-ended questions.
And this is because rating scale questions generate quantitative data you can analyze using charts and graphs, such as a Likert Scale Chart.
Besides, the resulting answers are always objective and conclusive.
Conversely, open-ended questions generate qualitative responses. This data type is frustrating and requires more effort and time to analyze compared to closed-ended questions.
Experiments show that open-ended questions have a lower completion rate.
So, if your goal is to save time and energy, consider using close-ended questions.
We recommend you ensure your rating scale questions are in a language your target audience can understand.
For example, if you engage respondents of Hispanic heritage, use translated questions to clarify everything. Also, engage Hispanics during the pretesting to iron out the ambiguity in your rating scale questions.
So, what are the benefits of rating scale examples in your survey?
Check out the benefits of a rating scale below.
Other data collection tools, such as interviews, are often prone to manipulation and distortion.
For instance, respondents may not want to share their true feelings with a stranger. Besides, social pressure to conform can easily distort the final data.
How?
Experiments have shown that we tend to agree with a more dominant person in a room.
Yes, even if we know the answer is wrong.
Survey rating scale questions can help you overcome this obstacle. Your respondents will fill out the surveys privately, without peer pressure.
The responses gathered will be more honest and reliable. In other words, they will be true representations of the actual sentiments of your target market.
Surveys rating scale questions can help you to do more than collect information about past customers.
To uncover a potential customer base, you can use rating scale questions in other scopes, such as market research.
How can you do this?
Well-crafted rating scale questions can help you ask qualifying questions that narrow the audience to hot leads.
For instance, you can target people with a high disposable income by using questions that probe income brackets.
One of the key merits of rating scale questions is that you can use them to question your audience over a protracted time.
Besides, there are freemium survey creation tools, such as Google and Microsoft Forms, for creating rating scale example questions and gathering data.
The longer you gather data, the more you’ll have for analysis. More data means a higher degree of reliability of the resulting insights.
In the ensuing section, we’ll show you how to analyze rating scale data in Excel.
You don’t want to miss this.
Excel is a spreadsheet application you can use to organize, store, and visualize data using charts and graphs.
You’re unlikely to find advanced charts in excel with rating scales, such as Likert Scale Chart.
We’re not advocating you leave Microsoft Excel.
Install a particular third-party add-in in your Excel to create charts with rating scales.
The application is called ChartExpo.
What is ChartExpo?
ChartExpo is an add-in you can easily install in your Microsoft Excel to access charts with rating scales.
ChartExpo is inexpensive. You’ll only spend $10 every month. Besides, you’re free to cancel your subscription anytime.
Also, you don’t need coding skills to create rating scale charts for your stories.
How to install ChartExpo in Excel?
ChartExpo charts are available both in Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. Please use the following CTA’s to install the tool of your choice and create beautiful visualizations in a few clicks in your favorite tool.
The Likert Scale Chart is used for survey feedback analysis to measure people’s opinions, attitudes, or behaviors. This allows researchers to easily visualize and understand the results of their survey by quantifying intangible feelings and attitudes.
Let’s analyze product survey responses using Likert Scale Chart.
| Questions | Scales | Responses |
| How well does our product meet your needs? | 1 | 130 |
| How well does our product meet your needs? | 2 | 136 |
| How well does our product meet your needs? | 3 | 128 |
| How well does our product meet your needs? | 4 | 968 |
| How well does our product meet your needs? | 5 | 638 |
| How satisfied are you with our team in resolving your issue? | 1 | 186 |
| How satisfied are you with our team in resolving your issue? | 2 | 278 |
| How satisfied are you with our team in resolving your issue? | 3 | 483 |
| How satisfied are you with our team in resolving your issue? | 4 | 539 |
| How satisfied are you with our team in resolving your issue? | 5 | 514 |
| How satisfied are you with your in-store experience? | 1 | 148 |
| How satisfied are you with your in-store experience? | 2 | 130 |
| How satisfied are you with your in-store experience? | 3 | 193 |
| How satisfied are you with your in-store experience? | 4 | 665 |
| How satisfied are you with your in-store experience? | 5 | 864 |
| How satisfied are you with product packing? | 1 | 145 |
| How satisfied are you with product packing? | 2 | 240 |
| How satisfied are you with product packing? | 3 | 104 |
| How satisfied are you with product packing? | 4 | 667 |
| How satisfied are you with product packing? | 5 | 844 |
A rating scale is a form of closed-ended survey question you can use to capture responses in numerical form.
For instance, on a scale of 1 (worst) to 5 (excellent), how would you rate our products or services?
Rating scale examples are mostly made up of multiple-choice questions to gather in-depth responses.
One of the key merits of rating scale questions is that you can use them to question your audience over a protracted time.
Besides, there are freemium survey creation tools, such as Google Forms and Microsoft Forms, that make everything easier in creating surveys.
When carrying out a survey exercise, your respondents may need to rate their knowledge or degree of satisfaction with a particular product or service.
To perform this objectively, you’ve got to use different rating scale questions in the survey.
Let’s assume you’ve used rating scale examples to gather data for further analysis.
How do you extract answers from the data?
This is where charts with rating scales, such as Likert Scale Chart, come in.
Microsoft Excel lacks charts with rating scales, such as a Likert Scale Chart.
So, what’s the solution?
We recommend you install an add-in, such as ChartExpo, to access Likert Scale Chart and other rating scale example charts.
ChartExpo is an Excel add-in loaded rating scale visualizations, such as Likert Scale Chart.
Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to access ready-made graphs for visualizing rating scale responses.
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