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Question Response Scales: Left to Right or Right to Left?
The standard survey templates in MemberView place negative responses to the left and positive responses to the right. Why do we do it that way? Research shows that respondents tend to favor the left side of a response scale.
For the following two questions, more respondents are likely to agree with the first statement than the second statement.
versus
The only difference is the order in which the response options are presented (agree or disagree first). Since we code the values from 1 to 5 for the first scale and 5 to 1 on the second scale you may have a very slightly higher average score on the second response option.
How Large is the Left-Side Bias?
It’s important to keep in mind that this and many other effects you get from changing wording, question direction, labeling and the number of scale steps is small. For example, a typical difference is something like .2-.3 of a point difference (on a 5-point scale).
You won’t start seeing these differences until your sample size exceeds 100 or so. As with most effects on response scales, the bias appears to occur more when the item being rated is phrased positively. Research suggests the bias is more extreme when the subject of the question is highly emotional or politically loaded.
Why the Bias?
Research suggests that it is something about both the participants and the items that cause the left-side bias. It is hypothesized that it has to do with participant motivation, reading habits, and education level in conjunction with a primacy effect.
Key Take-Aways:
- Putting the favorable response on the left-side will inflate the response a bit.
- If you are comparing the responses to past or future responses, don’t worry—whatever bias exists in the responses it will occur in both surveys. Comparisons are always more meaningful than stand alone results.
- You’ll get the most accurate comparison to MemberXP’s industry scores if you use our standard left to right scale.
- One is not necessarily right or wrong—if you have an existing scale stick with it.
