As an entrepreneur or marketeer, you need the right resources to keep improving your product and business. And one of the simplest and most effective ways is by conducting a survey. When building a survey you may encounter several types of questions you can use, like multiple choices, dropdown, or even open-ended questions. But if your objective is to measure actions and opinions, then the best choice would be to use a Likert Scale type of question. That’s because the Likert scale was created with the goal to collect and rank people’s likelihood or agreement about the given statement, making it the best option for this purpose.
The Likert scale question can help you improve your business by letting you know the real opinion your audience has of your product and company in general, and you can also survey employees using the results to boost employee engagement.
With MightyForms you can create the Likert scale in no time and automate the survey to analyze the results fast and efficiently. Learn how to build the perfect Likert scale question and add it to your surveys so you can have the best results.
What is the Likert Scale Survey Question
Even if you do not know the name, you certainly have answered a Likert question at some point. Do you know when you’re answering a survey and then a question comes up asking how much do you agree with a statement? That’s a Likert scale survey question. They have several objectives of use and the statement can be varied but their goal is to measure the action, likelihood, or agreement of the respondent to the question.
The Likert scale was developed in 1932 by the psychologist Rensis Likert, from whom the question gets the name. His objective with the scale was to measure people’s opinions and attitudes towards a proposed statement, getting a range as results.
On MightyForms you can create this type of question and add it to your surveys or forms by clicking on the plus sign (+) next to the field or dragging and dropping the Matrix Scale field option. And in this article, we’ll explain how you can do it and how to build the perfect Likert scale question step-by-step.
Advantages of using Likert scale questions on surveys
Likert scale simplifies your data collection and analysis and here are three main reasons for the benefits of using its methods and questions on your surveys:
It is easy for the respondent to evaluate and respond to complex questions since they have a range to choose from, being closer to what they think and how they feel
The Likert scale allows an analysis of a range of opinions and ranks them since it brings multiple options of answers about a single topic, ranking the most popular options among the respondents, giving a full view of each topic surveyed.
Ease of response due to the design of the question. The question is built to be very visual, even bringing (occasionally) elements like emojis, allowing it to be more visually appealing for the respondent, making it a very smooth and pleasant experience.
How to build a Likert scale that gets results
Likert scales are the best way to get a perspective of what people would likely do, measuring respondents’ agreement, likelihood, opinion, and actions. Do you want to know your audience better? Or how they interact with your product? If your question is about customer behavior, chances are high that what you need is a Likert scale question on your survey. And here are the 5 steps for you to build the perfect one.
Step 1 - Decide what you want to measure
Let’s face it, without a goal you can’t even start working! You must have an idea of what you want to measure and the purpose of it must be very clear. With this in hand, you can prepare and build better questions and its scale.
To build the perfect statement you must have in mind the following:
- What do you want to find out?
- With which purpose?
- What are you going to do with such data?
The answers to those questions are your guides to build the best Likert scale question.
Step 2 - Phrase your question carefully
A Likert scale measures the strength of the respondent’s opinions or their attitude towards a proposed situation or even the likelihood of them to do something. The Likert questions are subjective and, therefore, must be made with close attention to capture the information you need and gather results.
For example, if you want to know the respondent’s likelihood to run a marathon, you should not ask “would you run a marathon”, since that is a YES/NO kind of question. On the Likert scale, you could ask “what are the chances of you running a marathon” instead. And then you can have the following possibilities as answers:
- Definitely not
- Unlikely
- I don’t know
- Likely
- Count me in
The Likert scale is a reliable tool to measure what would be, in some other way, very difficult to be measurable. It can be applicable for HR reasons, as in to evaluate the workplace environment and also to select perfect applicants for a job offer, comparing their answers to the company’s mission. Make sure each question has a real-life application and that it can produce opposite statements (positive/negative) and never forget to add a middle-term, neutral sentence.
Step 3 - Create the response statements
The responses you create must be useful for the analysis you’re proposing to do. Your word choice must represent your intention, and must also be of easy interpretation, so it won’t cause any confusion or ambiguity. The respondent must get a clear idea of what you want and mean with each statement.
Try to use positive-neutral-negative indicators, with any other term in-between to create an ample range, so you can have balance and offer all possible options. The “Strongly agree - Strongly disagree” type of statement is the basic kind of scale you can use. But not the only one. You can be creative, and, why not, even funny on your statement creation. As long as it fits your business, you can let your mind flow to create the best statement to generate the best survey for your goal.
Likert scales are usually presented in an odd number of choices, as to give a neutral option for the respondent who is insecure about what to choose. Try to build answers with 5-7 indicators, which is a good range that can give you a perspective of the respondent’s opinion or action about the topic.
One important tip is to be consistent on your scale statement. Don’t start it with one idea like measuring quality and then finish it with a statement that brings a likelihood idea.
To sum it up, you can have several scale points types, such as (among others):
Agreement (Strongly Disagree - Strongly Agree)
Likelihood (Definitely not - Definitely)
Frequency (Never - Always)
Satisfaction (Not at all Satisfied - Extremely Satisfied)
Quality (Very Poor - Excellent)
And, finally, when building the scale, you can be creative and let the brand “personality” talk through it, just pay attention to the middle indicators so they don’t bring similar or very close ideas into them. For example, you can’t use ‘sometimes” followed by “occasionally” since they are synonymous, or “possible” and “probable”, because they have very close meaning. Try to create distinct ideas for each indicator of the scale, so you can build a better framework and have clearer results.
Step 4 - Scale points
The most common Likert scale rating is the one that goes 1 - 5 or 1 - 7, using statements that have each a scale point and weight. An odd-number scale allows a neutral option that is imperative to offer since some people can not be sure of how they feel about your statement or question.
For example:
This means that “Very Poor” has weight 1 and so on until “Excellent” has a weight of 5. These weights are added to the statement so you can easily measure the results. Keep in mind that the more options you offer, the fewer chances for the neutral indicator to be chosen by respondents.
Step 5 - Test it and then share it
The final step is to make sure your efforts are going to work properly and bring the results you’re expecting. Any survey, before being launched, must be tested first. Ask for a small group of participants to respond to the survey and then analyze the results, observing the interaction of the respondents with the questions and scales. You can also make use of powerful tools by MightyForms, like the Save & Resume feature, to allow the respondents to finish filling out your forms when it’s more suitable for them.
Get to know the scales that are not working, rephrase your sentences, and then, only then, you can publish and share your form to get the data you need.
Share it on social media or as a link on your email marketing campaign, make it a pop-up button, or embed it to your page. Always remember to promote it, if your goal is to have as many participants and respondents as possible.
When to use Likert scale surveys
Several are the uses for the Likert scale type of questions, most of them can be added to create a holistic survey, where you can get an ample insight of respondent’s actions and opinions for the scenario proposed on the question.
We bring three examples for you to apply the Likert scale on your business surveys and gather in-depth data and information about your audience, boosting your business.
Product Evaluation
Get the feedback for your product, measuring how the customer feels about its quality and if it attends to their expectation. You can gather information about several topics, including the intention of making a purchase again, chances of the customer recommending your business to friends and family, and even how they interact with the company.
Learn more about your customer’s behavior and usage patterns of your product. Use the collected data to improve the customer experience, the product, and even your marketing campaigns.
Example of Product Evaluation Likert Scale Survey Question
Customer Satisfaction
It talks about how a customer feels about your business in general. This means that the customer experience matters so you can have a satisfied client. The customer satisfaction survey will help you determine and evaluate how your business is perceived by your customers, giving you the chance to improve it.
When creating the Likert scale survey for customer satisfaction you must remember that the goal is to collect client’s opinions, letting them rank their level of agreement with each statement.
You can gather data about any part of your business: from the help articles you have on your website to the forms you offer, or how the client feels about the support.
Example of Customer Satisfaction Likert Scale Survey Question
Employee Engagement
Check with your teammates and employees how your company is doing internally. Sometimes you need to take a boost on employee engagement and are not aware of it. With a good and anonymous Likert scale survey, you can know the employees’ opinion and see what needs improvement, as an example.
Make sure you know your employees’ issues and needs is how you respect and show appreciation for their efforts towards the company. If you want a healthy and safe workplace, this is a good start.
Example of Employee Engagement Likert Scale Survey Question
Quickly build your Likert scale survey
Now it’s time for us to build our own Likert scale survey question. We have covered already the basis you need to build the best question, so, it won’t take long, either be difficult to come up with the question.
Step 1 - Build your form
Login or create your free MightyForms account. Then you can immediately start creating your first form by clicking on the New Form button. You can import your forms from another builder, from a PDF, start from a free template or you can start building your form from scratch.
Step 2 - Add the Matrix Scale
With your form dashboard open, it is time to add any necessary field to create your survey by dragging and dropping the fields you want. And then you add as many Matrix Scale (The Likert scale question on MightyForms) fields as you feel it is necessary to collect the data you need. In each field, you can add or remove options. Creating groups of topics makes it easy for the respondent to concentrate and interpret the questions and give the best-fit answer as their opinion.
Remember to make your word choices very carefully, don’t leave your questions ambiguous, and create very clear statements.
One more tip is to split your form, making it multi-step, so you can have at each step one topic, making it more appealing and easier to answer.
Step 3 - Design the form
And then you reach the time dedicated to design the layout of your forms. Use the same typography and color scheme of the rest of your website or that matches your brand, to keep a consistent identity.
Be creative.
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Add images, emojis, background image, and any other element you believe can help to capture the user’s attention.
Step 4 - Automate it
You want to collect data, so you let your form appeal to new leads, but you also need to analyze the collected data. For that, you can use features and tools, besides integrations that will help you with data analysis. And also, that can automate your tasks.
Abandoned Form Recovery
Track your forms and surveys field-by-field with this powerful tool by MightyForms. You’ll get to know the exact moment a lead drops off your survey and then you can set up an automatic message to be sent, as long as you catch the lead’s email address, of course, inviting the lead to continue to fill out the form from where they had stopped.
Dropbox integration
Store all data and keep it safe with this native integration. Send all form copies automatically to your Dropbox account, being able to access it from any place at any time.
Google Sheets integration
Have all data synched automatically to your Google Sheets account, organizing it, and within easy access for data analysis.
Save & Resume
Allow the respondent the choice of starting your survey and then finish it later, even from a different device. Send a nice automatic reminder to them and ensure you won’t lose a lead. Sometimes a person starts to fill out a form but doesn’t have the time to finish it. That’s the importance of being flexible and let leads finish the form when it is more convenient for them.
Zapier integration
Connect with over 3.000 other apps through Zapier. You can have access to several integrations, no coding needed, and automate your tasks, taking your form to the next level. Learn about which Zapier Zaps you can do to improve your survey and get more results.
Step 5 - Test and Share
And now you reach the final step. With your form built, it’s time to test it and then publish it and share the survey to start gathering and analyzing the data.
With MightyForms by your side, you can do more and gather more leads. Sign up for free or try a free demo right now.
