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Question Types

Ranking Survey Questions

Measure priorities or preferences when the order of choices matters more than a single selected option.

When To Use Ranking

Ranking questions ask respondents to order items by preference, importance, priority, likelihood, or perceived value. They are useful in social science research surveys when relative ordering matters more than a single rating for each item.

Block Builder: Ranking

Block Builder: Ranking

Edit items and configure initial display order for a ranking question.

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Use ranking for policy priorities, product features, issue salience, candidate attributes, organizational values, task preferences, or any study where researchers need ordinal preference data.

How It Supports Research Design

  • Forced tradeoffs reveal relative priorities when rating everything highly would be uninformative.
  • Random starting order helps reduce primacy effects in repeated ranking tasks.
  • Recode values keep items stable in exports even if labels are revised before launch.
  • Clear item lists make ranking easier for participants and easier to interpret later.

Block Builder: Item Order Options

Options: Ranking

Set item order to Fixed, Reverse, or Shuffle to randomize the initial drag order shown to each respondent.

Configure It In Domandata

  1. Step 1: Open Block Builder. Open the survey and select the block where the preference task belongs.

    Step 1: Open Block Builder

    Survey Editor

    No-persist demo using the real builder shell.

    Add a Block

    Trash is empty.

  2. Step 2: Add a Ranking question. Choose Ranking from the question type selector.

    Step 2: Choose Ranking question type

    Block Builder: Question Type

    Use the question type selector to switch between multiple choice, slider, grid, ranking, and more.

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  3. Step 3: Add the items. List the items respondents should order, and keep each label short enough to scan on mobile.

    Step 3: Add ranking items

    Block Builder: Ranking

    Edit items and configure initial display order for a ranking question.

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    Redirect (optional)

  4. Step 4: Set starting order. Use question options to randomize, reverse, or fix the starting order based on the design.

    Step 4: Set starting order

    Options: Ranking

    Set item order to Fixed, Reverse, or Shuffle to randomize the initial drag order shown to each respondent.

  5. Step 5: Add recodes if needed. Use stable item names or recodes when the ranking will feed analysis across waves or treatments.

    Step 5: Add recodes

    Options: Ranking

    Set item order to Fixed, Reverse, or Shuffle to randomize the initial drag order shown to each respondent.

  6. Step 6: Preview the task. Open Preview and make sure the item count is not too burdensome, especially on mobile.

    Step 6: Preview the ranking task

    Block Builder
    Preview
    Deploy

    Preview: Ranking

    Respondents drag policy priorities into order. The final rank sequence is stored in the policy_priorities export column.

Preview: Try Ranking

Ranking: Respondent View

Drag items to rank them — this is the exact interface respondents see.

Data And Export Notes

Ranking answers export as an ordered list. For analysis, decide in advance whether lower rank numbers mean higher priority and document that choice in your codebook. If you need independent ratings instead of forced ordering, consider Slider survey questions or Grid Matrix survey questions.

Export: Data and Files

Block Builder
Preview
Deploy

Export: Ranking

The policy_priorities column stores the final rank order. Confirm the format (JSON array or comma-separated names) matches your analysis pipeline.

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