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Confusion with Likert Scale Responses

  • September 2, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 10 views
J

I work in a University and we recently ran a 3 minute unit pulse survey consisting of three Likert scale questions and one open ended question. The purse of the surveys was to give unit coordinators insight at an early stage into how well their unit was being received.
We used our traditional Strongly Disagree through to Strongly Agree Likert scale, but we were contacted by several students to say they had submitted their responses incorrectly. When we extracted the dataset we saw that over 40 responders selected Strongly Disagree when their comments clearly indicated they loved their unit and it was obvious they had scale selected was the wrong response.
Could you recommend any mobile friendly graphic or image that could be used to highlight the positive verses negative response? We now need to review all surveys to see if we are highlighting to students the positive / negative response on Likert scale questions.

1 reply

ChristineM
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  • ChristineM
  • September 2, 2020

You could change the colors of the responses. Make negative responses red and positive blue. (I wouldn't do green because of stoplights and you don't want to make people feel bad about their choice.) You might have to consider colorblindness if you go this route.

However, this is not an issue I have run into ... but then again, I reorder the Likert scale to always be from worst to best.

I know the arguments for and against doing so ... and that there is now a tendency to go in the reverse order as it leaves the most positive option at the top when taking it on a phone.

I'm just a traditionalist and have yet to hear from anyone that they answered it wrong.

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