Ranking Feature

Ranking

Ranking is the term used for the format that allows a respondent to choose from a selection of answers in a particular order such as 'most important first'. This tutorial will show how to implement ranking into a survey using the Survey Galaxy website.

Ranking Format

To include a ranking format in your survey when creating a survey item select the 'Data Entry & Ranking Fields' format.

Enter the text for the question, a sub-text if required and list the questions/answer options.

Provide a column heading for the ranking column and then click on the 'Define Column Attributes' button.

The column attribute settings will be displayed in a pop-up window. Click on the ranking column's 'Data Type' list box to view the available data types, each data type is described at the bottom of the display window.

For the purpose of this tutorial the recommended 'ranked, asc, scoring reversed' data type will be used.

When a respondent chooses by clicking on one of the available answer options the 'ranked, asc, scoring reversed' data type will number their selections sequentially i.e. 1,2,3 etc. but the results will be scored in the results database as 3,2,1, so that the most popular choice receives the highest score. When the results are analyzed this will ensure that the most popular choice will receive the highest score. By choosing other ranking options you will be able to change the behaviour of the ranking numbering as it is displayed on the screen and scored in the database results.

Having selected the type of ranking you may then optionally limit the number of selections you will wish to accept, in the following example the selection has been limited to 3 by entering the number in the 'Rank Max Selections' field; for no limit leave this field blank.

Press the 'OK' button to accept the attributes values and then save the line item.

The following image shows how the ranking format will then appear to respondents and the message displayed if more than the specified maximum selections are made.

[Note that as part of the ranking format two buttons are included in the column heading, one to allow the respondent to step back one selection at a time, the other to reset all the selections that have been made].