{"id":1191,"date":"2018-11-05T16:20:05","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T10:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daydreamingnumbers.com\/?p=1191"},"modified":"2023-01-31T19:41:37","modified_gmt":"2023-01-31T14:11:37","slug":"4-ways-to-visualize-likert-scales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/daydreamingnumbers.com\/blog\/4-ways-to-visualize-likert-scales\/","title":{"rendered":"4 ways to visualize Likert Scales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Halloween just went by and it is Diwali this week in India – which means there are a lot of sweets around. I am on a no-sugar diet now, so no candies or sweets for me. To satisfy my sweet tooth, I thought it would be fun to use a candy data set to learn how to visualize Likert Scales. I found a blog post on\u00a0Datawrapper titled “The most controversial candy bar<\/a>” and the dataset was perfect for this post.<\/p>\n

So lets get on to Likert Scales with some candy data!<\/p>\n

What is a Likert scale?<\/h1>\n

Likert scale is a type of rating scale commonly used in surveys. When responding to a Likert type question, respondents simply state their level of agreement or disagreement on a symmetric agree-disagree scale.<\/p>\n

A typical 5-level Likert scale may look like<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Strongly disagree<\/li>\n
  2. Disagree<\/li>\n
  3. Neither agree or disagree<\/li>\n
  4. Agree<\/li>\n
  5. Strongly agree<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Visualizing Likert Scales: Understanding what is important<\/h1>\n

    Every visualization is built with certain objectives in mind. Before we talk about how to visualize Likert scales, it is important to understand what is important to us in a Likert scale.<\/p>\n

    Here are some possibilities:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Read values of strongly agree + agree and strongly disagree + disagree<\/li>\n
    2. Read values of strongly agree and strongly disagree<\/li>\n
    3. Read values of agree and disagree<\/li>\n
    4. Read values of neutral<\/li>\n
    5. Splitting the neutral responses equally between positive and negative is acceptable<\/li>\n
    6. Splitting the neutral responses equally between positive and negative is misleading<\/li>\n
    7. Part to whole relationship is important<\/li>\n
    8. Part to whole relationship is not important<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Remember, one visualization cannot do all the above. Every chart comes with a trade-off. That\u2019s why it\u2019s essential to understand what is important to us.<\/p>\n

      Now let\u2019s see 4 different ways to visualize Likert scale.We are not going to pick favourites, we are merely going to understand when each of these charts work well and when they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

      4 ways to visualize Likert scales<\/h1>\n

      1 – 100% stacked bar<\/strong><\/h2>\n

      \"likert-scale-100-percent-stacked-bar\"<\/a><\/p>\n

      What works well?<\/strong><\/p>\n