How to use an ordinal scale to organize your survey questions
Receiving actionable data based on people’s attitudes can be challenging. After all, measures of attitude are complex, and more often than not, highly subjective. Luckily, you can use an ordinal scale in your survey to collect useful data about your respondents’ opinions, perceptions, performance, and sentiments. The straightforward ordinal scale is a down-to-earth way to approach abstract questions in your surveys.
What is the definition of an ordinal scale?
An ordinal or “ordered” scale allows you to evaluate a respondent’s attitude towards a subject by using a set of ordered responses. For example, responses can include: “very satisfied,” “satisfied,” “dissatisfied,” and “very dissatisfied.” In an ordinal scale, the order of answer options is what’s significant—you can’t quantify the exact difference between each answer option. The difference between responses like “very satisfied” and “satisfied,” for example, is relative, not exact.
How do you use an ordinal scale?
Most of us have plenty of real-life experience with ordinal scales. Ordinal scales can help you do things like:
- Understand nuanced opinions. Do respondents “agree” or “strongly agree” with a stance on an issue?
- Uncover perceptions. Do respondents find a particular statement “false,” “mostly false,” “mostly true,” or “true”?
- Measure relative performance. Is a certain employee “more productive,” “just as productive,” or “less productive” than other employees?
- Gauge sentiment. Is a customer “very satisfied,” “satisfied,” “dissatisfied,” or “very dissatisfied” with a recent purchase?
As you can tell, the ordinal scale works across a variety of use cases. But what does it look like when it’s in use?
Examples of ordinal scales
While not all ordinal scales are Likert scales like the ones above (or Likert-type scales if you want to get technical) all Likert scales are ordinal. This popular form of survey question offers respondents an ordered range of answers from one extreme to another. Take, for example, these questions from our Employee Satisfaction Survey Template:
How meaningful is your work?
- Extremely meaningful
- Very meaningful
- Moderately meaningful
- Slightly meaningful
- Not at all meaningful
How challenging is your job?
- Extremely challenging
- Very challenging
- Moderately challenging
- Slightly challenging
- Not at all challenging
These Likert scale questions measure each employee’s perception of the work they do using various ordinal, i.e. ordered, scales. Other Likert scale questions measure sentiment with a balance of positive, negative, and neutral answers:
Are you satisfied with your employee benefits, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, or dissatisfied with them?
- Extremely satisfied
- Moderately satisfied
- Slightly satisfied
- Neither satisfied or dissatisfied
- Slightly dissatisfied
- Moderately dissatisfied
- Extremely dissatisfied
In the Question Bank, you’ll find numerous survey questions that use ordinal scales. But we’ll walk you through how to write them on your own.
How do you create an ordinal scale?
Just follow these steps:
1. Identify a focus for your question by deciding which opinion, perception, performance, or sentiment you’d like to collect data on. Decide whether to use a unipolar scale or bipolar scale. Unipolar scales measure the absence or presence of a single item—”not at all interested” to “extremely interested,” for instance. Bipolar scales ask respondents how their attitudes fall on two different sides of neutrality—”strongly disagree” to “strongly agree,” for example.
2. For unipolar questions, decide which single variable—like the level of “meaning” or “challenge”—to include in your scale. For bipolar questions, decide which two opposing variables—like “agree” and “disagree” or “satisfied” and “dissatisfied”—to include in your scale.
3. Create a set of ordered responses using your variable(s). While the difference between responses is always relative in ordinal scales, try to choose options that are somewhat evenly spaced from each other. For bipolar questions, include an equal number of responses for each opposing variable to avoid skewing your results.
If you plan on using the same ordinal scale for multiple survey questions, consider combining them into a single matrix/rating scale question. If you plan on tailoring an ordinal scale to each question, use classic multiple choice questions instead.
Note: Keep in mind that matrix questions can easily become overwhelming to answer. If you decide to use one, limit its size to 5 rows and 5 columns.
How do you interpret ordinal scale results?
For multiple choice questions that use an ordinal scale, you can look at the responses both individually and collectively. In either case, you can easily compare the relative popularity of each choice to identify key takeaways. Matrix/rating scale questions provide a similar level of analysis but also give you the weighted averages from each choice.
Does this level of analysis sound overwhelming? The good news is you don’t have to do it on your own. SurveyMonkey Analyze automatically collects your response data and allows you to create charts and graphs from your closed-ended questions with the click of a button.
So take the time to write survey questions that use an ordinal scale. The responses will help you align with your respondents’ opinions, perceptions, performance, and sentiments.
See how SurveyMonkey can power your curiosity
探索更多資源
工具組目錄
探索我們專為特定角色或產業設計的眾多工具組，幫助您善加利用意見回饋。
建立員工離職面談表單，以瞭解有哪些應改善之處
在離職面談中詢問合適的問題，以減少員工流失。立即開始使用我們的員工表單建立器工具和範本。
利用線上同意表單取得必要權限
透過自訂同意表單，取得所需的權限。立即免費註冊，開始使用我們的同意表單範本建立表單。
螢幕擷取畫面上呈現 SurveyMonkey 線上請求表單
輕鬆建立和自訂專屬的請求表單，以收集員工、客戶及其他對象的要求或申請。使用專家建立的範本，幾分鐘就能完成。