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
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
Configure It In Domandata
Step 1: Open Block Builder. Open the survey and select the block where the preference task belongs.
Step 1: Open Block Builder
Step 2: Add a Ranking question. Choose Ranking from the question type selector.
Step 2: Choose Ranking question type
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
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
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
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
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