Research Tips

Labeling Scales

Many surveys make use of ratings scales. For example, respondents may be asked to rate their agreement with something or to rate how well a particular product or service performs relative to certain criteria. Putting the negative end of such scales (disagreement or poor performance) to the left and the positive end (agreement or good performance) to the right can help increase the reliability of responses. This is because (English speaking) people read from left to right and normally expect scales to go from bad to good, so following this same pattern reduces the potential for mistakes.