An easy way to follow the best practice of using 5-point fully-labeled unipolar scales when writing surveys is to use common rating scales like the following.
Common Unipolar Scales
| Frequency: | Always, Often, Sometimes, Rarely, Never |
| Importance: | Essential, Significant, Important, Insignificant, Unimportant |
| Liking: | Like extremely well, Like quite well, Like somewhat, Like slightly, Don’t like at all |
| Priority: | Essential, High priority, Medium priority, Low priority, Not a priority |
| Quality (traditional): | Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, Very Poor |
| Quality (contemporary): | Excellent, Good, Acceptable, Poor, Terrible |
| Quality (relative): | Excellent given the price, Good given the price, Average given the price, Poor given the price, Terrible given the price |
| Quantity: | All, Most, Half, Some, None |
Scales of Unipolar Degree
A common pattern is Completely cromulent, Very cromulent, Somewhat cromulent, Hardly cromulent, and Not at all cromulent. Replace cromulent with the word or phrase below. For some attributes, Extremely is better than Completely (e.g., Extremely influential vs. Completely influential).
| Completely___ | Very___ | Somewhat___ | Hardly___ | Not at all___ | |
| ___acceptable | |||||
| ___likely | |||||
| ___probable | |||||
| ___satisfied | |||||
| ___true of me | |||||
| ___true of what I believe | |||||
| Extremely___ | Very___ | Somewhat___ | Hardly___ | Not at all___ | |
| ___aware | |||||
| ___concerned | |||||
| ___easy | |||||
| ___familiar | |||||
| ___important | |||||
| ___influential | |||||
| ___interested |
Bipolar Rating Scales
When it comes to bipolar scales, where the first and last choice are opposites, it’s typically better to write such questions using the unipolar scales above or to break the questions into three or four questions. When that’s impractical, use these scales, but try to avoid the agreement scale if you can.
| Agreement: | Completely agree, Somewhat agree, Slightly agree, Neither agree nor disagree, Slightly disagree, Somewhat disagree, Completely disagree |
| Appropriateness: | Absolutely appropriate, Somewhat appropriate, Slightly appropriate, Neutral, Slightly inappropriate, Somewhat inappropriate, Absolutely inappropriate |
| Change: | Increase significantly, Increase somewhat, Increase a little, Stay the same, Decrease a little, Decrease somewhat, Decrease significantly |
| Effort: | Extremely easy, Very easy, Fairly easy, Moderate, Fairly hard, Very hard, Extremely hard |
| Liking: | Like a great deal, Like somewhat, Like a little, Neither like nor dislike, Dislike a little, Dislike somewhat, Dislike a great deal |
| Relative: | Greatly above average, Somewhat above average, Slightly above average, Average, Slightly below average, Somewhat below average, Greatly below average |
Other Ordinal Rating Scales
Some ordinal scales list responses that have an order relative to one other. Of course, this order can be subjective. (Once a respondent bitterly complained to me that a vocational diploma was superior to “some college”; I can’t say I disagree, but I think the scale reads better as is.)
| Education (U.S.) | Some high school or less; High school diploma, GED, or equivalent; Vocational or technical diploma; Some college; Associate’s degree; Bachelor’s degree; Master’s degree; Doctorate |
| Employees | 0 employees (just you the owner), 1-9 employees, 10-99 employees, 100-999 employees, 1,000 to 9,999 employees, 10,000+ employees |
| Household Size | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5+ |
| Management (U.S.) | Staff, Team Lead, Supervisor, Manager, Director, Vice President, President, Chief Officer |
| Government (U.S.) | City, County, State, Federal |
| Marital Status | Single (never married), Living with partner, Married and living with spouse, Married but separated from spouse, Divorced, Widowed |
Usage frequency and periodicity can vary widely for products and services and for whether they are intended for consumers or business people. Samples of these scales include:
- Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Never
- Multiple times a day, Daily, Multiple times a week, Weekly, Multiple times a month, Monthly, Less often than once a month, Never
- Multiple times a year, Once or twice a year, Annually, Just once, Never
- Within the past week, Within the past month, Within the past six months, More than six months ago, Never
- In the past month, In the past 3 months, In the past 12 months, More than a year ago, Never
- Within an hour, Within two hours, Within four hours, Within a business day, Within two business days
Different organizations may have different house styles and scales that they use for benchmark purposes. In general, it’s easier and more reliable to use these rating scales than to develop your own wording.
For more on why scales are oriented from positive to negative, see Failing to Listen to Research… on Research.
Originally published February 28, 2018. Updated to reflect best practices taught by Allyson Holbrook, Ph.D. as well as by Reg Baker, the former executive director for the MRII.
Author Notes:
Jeffrey Henning
