The Polarity Scale question type, also known as a semantic differential, is essentially a smooth scale with 200 steps, prompting respondents to move the slider to the left or right of center, in order to indicate how close their perception is to one of the two opposing alternatives located at each end of the scale. This question type is often used to measure subjective and nuanced perceptions of a brand, logo or corporate identity, product or service, character, experience, or a situation. It comes with a large library of pairs we’ve created for you. Feel free to choose them from the menu or enter your own unique scales.
At the bottom of the question you’ll find a series of checkboxes, allowing you to fine tune the experience for respondents. “Snap to center” creates a ‘gravitational zone’ ten steps in either direction from the center that will snap the slider back to the middle if a respondent is indecisive and leaves the slider too close to the center (or neutral answer). “Snap to poles” creates a similar gravitational zone around the extreme ends of the scales on the far left and far right. Once the slider is released within ten steps of either end, the platform will automatically snap it all the way to the end of the scale. When you use “Snap to center” with the “Accept Neutral” option off, you can prevent users from remaining undecided and force them to pledge their allegiance toward one end of the scale or another.
You can bundle as many as seven scales in one question, expandable to ten with the Pro Survey Authoring Package.
The main question and each scale can have a unique image associated with them. Please use a collage of two images in one file and stretch it to the full width of the survey widget if you want to illustrate each side of a scale and make the illustrations appear close to the corresponding ends of the range.
The order in which items appear for each respondent can be randomized if global randomization is ON in the survey. Each specific item can be anchored to its position to make an exception from the global randomization rule.
The Polarity Scale question type can also have a single skip logic destination, please use the rabbit icon to set it up.
By default you will see results presented in “Popularity” mode. It’ll show you how popular each side of the scale was, or how many people ended up leaving their slider on one side or another. If neutral answers were allowed, you may see some grey gaps in the center of the chart, indicating the percentage of undecided respondents.
The slider on top of the question allows you to change the rules of what you count as a neutral or undecided answer. It’ll work regardless of whether you allowed neutral answers or not in the survey.
Intensity mode incorporates the intensity of answers, or the degree to which respondents moved away from the center toward one side of the scale or another. The default view is called Pairs and shows intensities of answers on both sides of each scale. Delta mode calculates the average of all answers and shows the resulting value on the chart. You can further adjust the chart by choosing the mean or median option.
You can filter your survey by the Polarity Scale question type with ease. Just restrict the range for each pair to the values you want to allow in your filter and click apply. Please note: in the survey widget, the scale goes from 100 on one side to 100 on the other side, with 200 steps total. In the filters on the stats page, the scale is expressed from -100 to 100. It helps to process data and avoid ambiguities. Please also note that the stops on the sliders in filters will only show the values that were selected by at least one respondent who took the survey.