SurveyMonkey

Paid feature: Best Worst Scale question type is only available to customers on some paid plans.

The Best Worst Scale question is a closed-ended question that asks survey takers to select the best and worst option from a list of items. This lets you find out what survey takers value. People are better at judging items at extremes than rating or ranking items, so survey takers can easily let you know what’s the best and worst, most and least important, or highest or lowest priority option.  

This question type is used with our MaxDiff Solution, where Best Worst Scale questions are repeated in a programmatic way to understand relative importance among a longer list of items.

To add this question type: 

  1. Go to the Design Survey section.
  2. From the Build section, choose Best Worst Scale.
  3. Enter your question and Items. You can add up to 10 items. 
  4. (Optional) Set up any additional options.
  5. Click Save

Before you send your survey, preview your survey design to see what your survey will look like to survey takers.

Under the Options tab, you can customize the question in the following ways:

The Best Worst Scale question doesn’t work in conversation survey format or if you’re using a Classic theme, and it isn’t compatible with offline mode.

Best Worst Scale questions are easy to analyze since they're closed-ended. Your results will be presented in a chart and in a table with the items listed down the first column, and best and worst listed across the first row. 

To break down your results even more, use Filter and Compare rules.  

The Depth display option allows you to choose between the following options:

  • Distribution: Charts the absolute number or percentage of survey takers that selected each answer choice.
  • Weighted Average: Charts the average rating for each answer choice.

The chart types available depend on the question type, and the display options you configure. Learn more: Custom Charts & Data Tables

All export types are available for Best Worst Scale questions.

If you want to share your results with others, you can share your exports or create a Shared Data page