Rating scale is the most common type of online survey. Just think about how often you’re asked to rate your experience with an app, a restaurant, or a store.
Let’s go through a few common rating scale types to give you an overview of this broad survey category. Each of these types might appear as a 1 to 10 scale, but they can consist of any number of points.Â
Numerical scale
On a numerical scale, the responses are presented as numbers. Many numerical scales have labeled points (or at least endpoints).
A popular example of the numerical scale is the NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey that measures customer loyalty with a question: “How likely are you to recommend our company to your friends or colleagues?”. The responses are shown on a scale from 0 (“not at all likely”) to 10 “very likely.”
The 1-to-10 survey template above is also a numerical scale!
Descriptive scale
In the descriptive scale, the answers are presented in the form of verbal statements instead of numbers.
One of the examples of such surveys is the Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey, where the respondents have to rate their customer satisfaction levels on a scale from “very satisfied” to “completely unsatisfied.”
Likert scale
Likert scale deserves a special mention as the most popular rating scale survey example. It measures people’s attitudes towards a certain statement and remains a reliable method of measuring complex ideas quantitatively. It’s widely used for both academic and commercial purposes, including customer research.
Pictorial/graphic scale
On a pictorial scale, the answers take are pictures instead of numbers or numbers—e.g. a set of emoticons ranging from a smiling one to an enraged one. This scale is very intuitive and immune to language barriers, so it works well for quick feedback surveys.