The Matrix/Likert question type is similar to the multiple choice question type, but it is presented as a table of related questions and answers. It is typically used to collect data that has identical answers (i.e., rate your preference – poor, good, excellent). Here’s some additional information on using the Likert scale in your surveys.
Options
Note, you can add media to any matrix/likert question. Answer options do not support media.
Include a note – Checking this will allow you to enter a note that will appear under your question.
Question is mandatory – Checking this will make the question mandatory. Your participants must answer the question to complete the survey.
Choices – See below for detail on Matrix and Likert choices.
Order Choices – You can choose from four different ways to order the choices: as entered, randomize columns, randomize questions, and randomize both.
Matrix type
Your matrix can be one of these types:
- Single choice per question – respondent can pick one column choice per row.
- Single choice with Likert – respondent can pick one column choice per row
- Multiple choices per question – respondent can pick multiple columns per row
The single choice per question and single choice with Likert will look like this in the survey question editor.
This is how the single choice per question and single choice with Likert will look to your respondents:
The multiple choices per question type will look like this in the survey question editor:
This is how the multiple choices per question type will look to your respondents:
Likert
The Likert matrix type is almost identical to the single choice type, but the columns have a weighted score. These scores are totaled, averaged, and presented in your survey report, providing you with an overall “score” for the row.
When editing a Likert matrix you can assign your own weighted scores.
This is how the Likert question type appears to your respondents. Note that it appears to be identical to the single choice Matrix question type:
Likert weightings
Here’s a scenario to help explain how Likert weightings work, and the calculation we use to arrive at the weighted average score.
At ACME Co., we want to get some customer feedback on our portable hole. We devised a Likert question to ask participants to rate the portable hole on five aspects: Size, Price, Reliability, Portability, and Durability. We’ve used a typical five-point Likert rating scale for the question. We’ve asked participants to rate whether or not they were very unsatisfied, unsatisfied, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, satisfied, or very satisfied with each quality we want to collect feedback on. We’ve left the default Likert weighting scale intact, though you can enter your own weightings as you see fit:
Checking the results, here’s what we see. Not shown here is an important fact: we’ve got 11 total responses to our survey so far.
Note that Size’s weighted average score is 3.36. Here’s how we arrive at that score:
(Number of votes * Weighting for column 1) + (Number of votes * Weighting for column 2) + Number of votes * Weighting for Column 3) + (Number of votes * Weighting for column 4) + (Number of votes * Weighting for column 5) / Total Number of Votes
Here’s the equation for Size:
(2 * 1) + (1 * 2) + (2 * 3) + (3 * 4) + (3 * 5) / 11
2 + 2 + 6 + 12 + 15 / 11
37 / 11 = 3.36
Overall, we can see that of the five qualities, Durability rated most highly, with an average weighted score of 4.
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