Surveys are important tools for gathering the data we use for training evaluation, and they’re easy to compose, right? Wrong! Our survey respondents get frustrated with questions that don’t have response options that match their experiences, or confused by response options that are misaligned with question stems. Poorly constructed rating scale questions are a particularly common phenomenon, even for experienced evaluators and survey designers! Did you know that the rating scales we use with survey questions actually influence response? This makes our decisions about which scales or which intervals to offer even more impactful. We also hold onto myths about how many scale points are best, how to label them, or whether to use an odd or even number of response options. These beliefs prevent us from asking clear, easy-to-answer questions that yield meaningful, actionable data.

Join this session for real-world examples of survey questions, practice in identifying common rating scale problems, and some mythbusting, along with research-based strategies for designing high-quality rating scale questions. 

Participants will be able to:

• identify common problems with survey rating scales
• identify common myths in rating scale design
• determine when to use an odd or even number of scale points in a given survey item
• determine when to use midpoints and non-substantive response options in rating scale items
• apply best practices for labeling rating scales

 

In partnership with

Sheila B. Robinson, Ed.D., Custom Professional Learning, LLC, is a speaker, educator, and consultant with a passion for the science of teaching and learning, presentations, and asking questions. Through her talks, professional development workshops and university courses, Sheila teaches people how to make the most of professional learning and how to ask good questions, along with program evaluation, survey design, data visualization, audience engagement, and presentation design.
  
Sheila is author of Designing Quality Survey Questions, a text focused on a respondent-centered and research-based survey design process that focuses on how we ask questions of our respondents, and Professional Development Program Evaluation for the Win: How to Sleep Well at Night Knowing Your Professional Learning Is Effective, a free ebook on training program evaluation.

Sheila is a Certified Presentation Specialist (CPS)™, Vice President of the Presentation Guild, and Senior Design and Facilitation Consultant with Evergreen Data.