Ranking Scale

Ranking scale questions are an essential tool in surveys questionnaires. In surveys, we need to establish some type of priorities among a set of subjects (Priority on policies, attributes, interest, organizations, individuals, etc.). For capturing this type of data, we can use Ranking questions. 

Usually ranking questions are used to collect ordinal data.  An ordinal scale measurement tells whether an object has more or less of characteristics than some other objects. In ranking questions, the despondence can compare the items and put their preference in an orderly fashion. By using the rank scale, we can identify what matters and what doesn’t matter in relation to a set of variables relating to a subject matter. So it gives the researcher an insight into what matters to your respondents. It helps to establish the relative importance in a group of items. 

Typically ranking scale used to measure the priority option of the respondent, rather than the strength of response in a rating scale (Eg. Likert Scale). 

Ranking forces the dependence to choose between the items and arrange them according to their preferences. In rank order questions, it provides several objects simultaneously, and ask the respondent to order or rank them according to some criterion. The main disadvantage of this scale is that, if the respondent has no interest in any of the objects given for ranking, he is forced to choose a rank for that.  

For example, if you want to compare certain products alongside one another, ranking is the perfect method to ask questions.

Example: Rank your feature preferences when you buy a mobile phone. The most prefered feature should be ranked one, the second prefered feature should be rank two and so on.

Rank the following mobile brand in order of your preference, the most preferred mobile brand should be ranked one, the second most preferred should be ranked two and so on.

To know the descriptive analysis of the ranking scale, watch the video.