About Ranking advanced

Ranking advanced asks participants to put items in order of importance or preference. They move the items from one list to the other, and the order in the second list is their ranking. Use it when you need priorities, not ratings: a ranking forces choices, while a rating lets people rate everything as important.

In the picture: 1 Available items, the items not ranked yet, 2 Your ranking, the items in the order the participant chose. Participants double-click an item or drag it to move it.

Add a Ranking advanced question

1. Click the purple + in the top bar. The question type picker opens.

2. Under Ranking & rating, click Ranking advanced. The question appears at the end of the current question group with two empty items.

3. Click Your question here and type your question.

4. Click each Subquestion option and type an item. Add subquestion below the last item adds another one.

Settings that matter

Select the question to open its settings on the right.

• Minimum answers and Maximum answers (Simple tab): how many items participants must or may rank. With Maximum answers 3, participants rank their top three.
• Choice header and Rank header (Advanced > Other): replace the headings Available items and Your ranking.
• Subquestions order (Advanced > Display): shows the available items in random order, so their starting position does not influence the ranking.
• Show number and Show handle (Advanced > Display): show the rank numbers and a drag handle on the items.

How the answers are stored

The question stores one value per rank: the first rank is Q013_1, the second Q013_2, and so on for a question with the code Q013. Each value is the code of the item on that rank, for example SQ002. In the export, each rank is a column.

Next steps

• Array (Point choice): rate items instead of ranking them
• Statistics: see the answers as charts
• Export your responses

FAQ

Do participants have to rank all items?

Only if you want them to. Set Minimum answers to the number of items to require a full ranking, or to a lower number, for example 3, to require a top three.

How many items should I offer?

Up to about seven. Longer lists are hard to rank on a phone, and the lower ranks become guesswork. Use Maximum answers to ask for a top three or top five instead.