A scale question is used when a situation is not black or white. With a scale question the respondent can indicate to which extent or degree he or she agrees, or values something. Scale questions are usually used to measure an opinion.
There are many types of scale questions. If you are creating scale questions for the first time this may seem complicated. Fortunately, you can see how the choices you make are shown to the respondent. Basically, when you design a scale question you must make four choices:
1. the number of scales;
2. the values of all the scales or only the outer limits of the scales;
3. whether or not you want to use row labels;
4. whether or not you want to use 'Not applicable'.
Figure 9: Example of a 5 scale question.
A few examples will make this clear:
Figure 10: The same scale question, with values for each scale.
Figure 11: A 6 scale question with 'limits for each row' and an extra scale 'not applicable'.