What is a Likert scale?

Have you ever answered a question that asked you how much you agree or disagree with something?

That kind of question is known as a Likert scale. Likert scales are widely used to measure attitudes and opinions with a greater degree of nuance than a simple “yes/no” question.

Let’s explore what makes up a Likert question, find examples, understand when you should use this tool, and see how you can put it to work for your surveys.

To understand the Likert rating scale, you first need to understand what a survey scale is.

A survey scale represents a set of answer options—either numeric or verbal—that cover a range of opinions on a topic. It’s always part of a closed-ended question (a question that presents respondents with pre-populated answer choices).

So what is a Likert scale survey question? It’s a question that uses a 5 or 7-point scale, sometimes referred to as a satisfaction scale, that ranges from one extreme attitude to another. Typically, the Likert survey question includes a moderate or neutral option in its scale.

Likert scales (named after their creator, American social scientist Rensis Likert) are quite popular because they are one of the most reliable ways to measure opinions, perceptions, and behaviors.

Compared to binary questions, which give you only two answer options, Likert-type questions will get you more granular feedback about whether your product was just “good enough” or (hopefully) “excellent.” And Likert questions can help you decide whether a recent company outing left employees feeling “very satisfied,” “somewhat dissatisfied,” or maybe just neutral.

This method will let you uncover degrees of opinion that could make a real difference in understanding the feedback you’re getting. And it can also pinpoint the areas where you might want to improve your service or product.

Likert scale questions are used in many different types of surveys, whether you are trying to find out how your employees feel about their work or what your customers think about your latest product.

To help you use Likert questions effectively, here are some examples of how they can look:

Since there are so many kinds of survey questions, how do you know when you should use Likert questions?

Likert scales are great for digging down deep into one specific topic to find out (in greater detail) what people think about it. So, think of using Likert survey questions any time you need to find out more about…

…or any other questions where you need to measure sentiment about something specific and you want a deeper level of detail in your responses.

If you want to get a bit geeky about it, the deeper level of detail is what survey experts call variance. The more variance you have, the better you know the nuances of someone’s thinking.

One great thing about the Likert scale is that it can help you avoid some of the common pitfalls of survey design, like creating overly broad questions that respondents may find too hard to think about. This could lead them to get frustrated and start answering too quickly–spoiling the quality of your data.

Survey designers who are in a bit of a hurry sometimes reach for the broader types of questions–like “yes/no,” “select all,” open-ended, ranking, or matrix questions–as a sort of survey shortcut.

As a rule of thumb, though, in most of these scenarios they should trust their old friend the Likert scale, which will keep the respondent focused and happy with its simple, direct language.

It’s important to keep each series of questions in your survey focused around the same topic. In the end, this will help you get more accurate results. Why? Because when the time comes for you to report the data, you want to analyze a score that sums up the results from a few questions.

For example, you could ask this initial question:

How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the quality of the dinner you were served tonight?

And then follow up with:

How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the quality of your appetizers tonight?

How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the quality of the main course tonight?

How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the quality of dessert tonight?

But here’s one question you should leave for another section of the survey:

How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with service at the coat-check room tonight?

Grouping questions about one topic together and adding up their responses to get a score–a “Quality of Food” score, in this case–you will get a more reliable measurement of the attitudes toward the particular product, service or event you’re researching.

Be accurate. Likert-type questions must be phrased correctly in order to avoid confusion and increase their effectiveness. If you ask about satisfaction with the service at a restaurant, do you mean the service from valets, the waiters, or the host? All of the above? Are you asking whether the customer was satisfied with the speed of service, the courteousness of the attendants, or the quality of the food and drinks? Bottom line: If you can get more specific, there’s a higher chance that your Likert questions will deliver more valuable responses.

Be careful with adjectives. When you’re using words to ask about concepts in your survey, you need to be sure people will understand exactly what you mean. Your response options need to include descriptive words that are easily understandable. There should be no confusion about which grade is higher or bigger than the next: Is “pretty much” more than “quite a bit”? It’s advisable to start from the extremes (“extremely,” “not at all”,) set the midpoint of your scale to represent moderation (“moderately,”) or neutrality (“neither agree nor disagree,”) and then use very clear terms–“very,” “slightly”–for the rest of the options.

Bipolar or unipolar? Do you want a question where attitudes can fall on two sides of neutrality–“love” vs. “hate”– or one where the range of possible answers goes from “none” to the maximum? The latter, a unipolar scale, is preferable in most cases. For example, it’s better to use a scale that ranges from “extremely brave” to “not at all brave,” rather than a scale that ranges from “extremely brave” to “extremely shy.” Unipolar scales are just easier for people to think about, and you can be sure that one end is the exact opposite of the other, which makes it methodologically more sound as well.

Better to ask. Statements carry an implicit risk: Most people will tend to agree rather than disagree with them because humans are mostly nice and respectful. (This phenomenon is called acquiescence response bias.) It’s more effective, then, to ask a question than to make a statement.

You have probably known Likert-scale questions for a long time, even if you didn’t know their unique name. Now you also know how to create effective ones that can bring a greater degree of nuance to the key questions in your surveys.