Checklist
Scale direction checklist for course evaluations
Seven rules that keep rating scale layout from showing up as a change in teaching
A checklist for quality offices and survey designers who run course evaluations. Option order on a rating scale can nudge answers, most of all on agree/disagree statements, and the effect becomes a problem when the layout changes between faculties, versions or years. Use it when you design or revise a questionnaire. Koji keeps rating scales in one orientation and follows each score with a question about the reason.
What's in this checklist
- Choose one scale direction for the whole institution and document it
- Never flip direction mid-series; if you must, run both versions for a cycle
- Ask item-specific questions instead of agree/disagree statements
- Label the end points of every rating scale
- Keep ordinal options in a fixed order, never randomised
- Use the same orientation on paper, web and mobile
- Report full distributions alongside any mean
Use this image
Free to use in your docs, decks and posts under CC BY 4.0, as long as you credit Koji with a link to this page. To embed it, paste this into your page:
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<a href="https://www.koji.so/visuals/scale-direction-course-evaluation-checklist"><img src="https://www.koji.so/visuals/scale-direction-course-evaluation-checklist/scale-direction-course-evaluation-checklist.png" alt="Checklist of seven rules for rating scale direction in course evaluation questionnaires, from one fixed direction to reporting distributions." width="1200" height="630" /></a>
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.koji.so/visuals/scale-direction-course-evaluation-checklist">Scale direction checklist for course evaluations</a>, Koji</p>
