Module 2: Creating Scales Louise Murray, Ph.D. College of Saint Elizabeth Director of Institutional Research lmurray@cs

1. Module 2: Creating Scales Louise Murray, Ph.D. College of Saint Elizabeth Director of Institutional Research lmurray@cse.edu 973-290-4430 Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012

2. Best Practice for Survey Design • Best Practice: After your introduction, begin with a key question about the topic of your survey. • Several survey experts recommend placing personal (or demographic) questions at the end. The person taking the survey is interested in the survey topic, not in providing his or her personal information. • For a full rationale for this survey tip, see Lietz (2010), which is posted on the website where you accessed these podcasts. Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012

3. Module 2: Creating Scales • First we have to get back into our survey • 1. Log onto Survey Monkey by going to the website at http://www.surveymonkey.com • 2. Enter the CSE user name (CSEGraduatePrograms) and password, available from your advisor or me. If you contact me, you must use your CSE email. • Now find your survey from among those of your colleagues. Again, the College expects that all graduate students and faculty will respect the work of their colleagues and only work on their survey. Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012

4. Locating your survey • 1. Scroll down and find your survey. • It’s a good idea to make a note of your title, because if you have not been working on your survey for a while, your survey may have moved to a later screen. If you can specify the exact title, you can more easily locate your survey. • 2. Now click on your survey. Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012

5. Now it’s time to insert your survey questions. • 1. First click “Add a new page” • 2. Give the page a title; having a title can help you later when you want to edit your survey. • 3. Now let’s view the question formats. Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012

6. Let’s develop a Likert Scale • Select Rating Scale from among the question type options. • First add your instruction. I am preparing an online survey to elicit your feedback about these modules. My instruction is “Please rate the helpfulness of the modules in the Survey Monkey podcast.” Perhaps you want your instruction to be “Please indicate whether you agree or disagree with the following statements” or “Please indicate how frequently you engage in each of the following activities.” Add your instruction in the “Text Question” box. • Now add your row choices. For my survey, the row choices are Module 1:.. Etc. • Now add your rating choices. The default is to have four rating categories, but you may choose from as few as two up to as many as 16. • You should also decide the direction of your numerical ratings. Do you want the most favorable rating to have the highest or lowest score? You decide. Recent scholarship on survey development advises to put the negative ratings first. • Now press Save Changes.” Bravo! A rating scale! Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012

7. Improving the look of your Likert Scale • Click the Preview button on the upper right hand side of your screen so you can see how the person completing your survey would see it. • Do you like the look, or is the column for the row choices too narrow? • Let’s get out of preview by clicking Exit Survey in the upper right hand corner. • Click Edit Question and you are back to the design screen. Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012

8. Improving the look of your Likert Scale (cont’d) • Scroll down and at the end, you will see a menu for Size and Placement options. • Click this menu and consider the label menu. You see that the default is set at 20% for the label (or scale item) and 80% for the response choices, but you can change the percentage distributions. I like to start with 50% and 50%. Sometimes I decide to make additional adjustments. • Once you like the look, click Save Changes. Bravo! You have an attractive rating scale. Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012

9. Consider an additional option. • Let’s realize that not everyone will listen to every module. Would I want people who did not listen to a podcast rate it? Worse, might those who did not listen to a module rate it as “Not helpful.” • To avoid these pitfalls, I can use another option. • Go back to Edit Question and select the NA option. You may want to edit. Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012

10. Forced Ranking Scales • Do you want to create a scale where respondents rank choices? For example, do you want to ask people their first, second, third and fourth choices about a topic? • Survey Monkey allows you to set up a scale so that respondents can only indicate one first choice, one second choice etc. • Let’s use the copy function to save time. Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012

11. Creating a ranking scale (cont’d) • Click Save Changes. • Go to preview. Do you like the look? • Let’s go back and change the margins for the columns like we did for the Likert Scale. • Again, we go back, click Edit Question and scroll down to Size and Placement and click. • Start with 50% 50% and adjust accordingly. Creating Scales on Survey Monkey Spring 2012