People Element provides question types that make giving feedback easy and provides data in the format needed for your retention and engagement purposes.
We recommend using a 5-point Likert scale and keeping the scale consistent throughout the survey. A 5-point Likert scale provides a universal method for collecting data and is the most frequently used psychometric tool in employee surveys making it easy for people to respond (reducing cognitive load) and providing good reliability and validity. The use of a 5-point scale also provides a reliable measure for our normative benchmarking. Likert scales have the advantage that they do not expect a simple yes/no answer from the respondent, but rather allow for degrees of opinion, and even no opinion at all. Therefore, quantitative data is obtained that can be analyzed with relative ease.
People Element supports the use of other scales as needed (dropdown, yes/no, open-ended) but maintains the 1-5 agreement scale as the default scale due to ease of use, reliability, and normative data. If a different scale is applied, our benchmarks may not be usable or reliable. We can provide guidance in the survey design process to ensure a reliable measurement is in place.
Don't reverse the scale. Reporting is designed to report out mean and favorability scores for single-select items. Favorability is always calculated using the top scores (4's and 5's for a 5-point scale), never the lower end of the scale.
In regards to reporting, below are the responses per scale that will be included when calculating favorability:
- The percent of responses that are a 2 when using a 2-point scale
- The percent of responses that are a 3 when using a 3-point scale
- The percent of responses that are a 3 or 4 when using a 4-point scale
- The percent of responses that are a 4 or 5 when using a 5-point scale
- The percent of responses that are a 5 or 6 when using a 6-point scale
- The percent of responses that are a 6 or 7 when using a 7-point scale
- The percent of responses that are a 7 or 8 when using a 8-point scale
- The percent of responses that are a 8 or 9 when using a 9-point scale
- The percent of responses that are a 9 or 10 when using a 10-point scale