Rating Questions in Questionnaires & Surveys

In many social science studies, personal well-being or subjective opinions of respondents are the primary focus. To gather these, most empirical studies present respondents with specific rating questions, similar to traditional personality tests.

General Definition of Rating Questions

Rating questions are a question type that allows measurement of attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. Rating questions are typically presented to respondents as statements for evaluation, which must be answered on a numerical, verbal, or visual rating scale with graduated levels.

1. Verbal Rating Scale
2. Numerical Rating Scale
3. Visual Rating Scale

1. Verbal Rating Scale

With a verbal rating scale, answer options are offered in words.

2. Numerical Rating Scale

With a numerical rating scale, answer options are offered in numbers, such as school grades.

3. Visual Rating Scale

With a visual rating scale, answer options are offered as images, icons, emojis, etc.

The distances or intervals between individual answer options are treated as equally large in all rating scales (= interval scale). This means that the difference between the 1st and 2nd answer option is exactly as large as between the 4th and 5th. This allows them to be meaningfully evaluated with most statistical methods afterward.

Typical Use of Rating Questions

Rating questions are used in various research fields whenever respondents must provide a subjective evaluation or assessment, for example, regarding satisfaction with a product. In sociology, psychology, and market and opinion research, rating questions on a rating scale are indispensable for everyday practice.

Rating questions answered using a rating scale make it possible to measure qualitative characteristics (= those not directly expressed in numerical values) for statistical collection in the form of numerical values. In this way, subjective matters such as emotions and feelings of respondents can still be meaningfully categorized and analyzed.