What is a Points Question?

At SurveyMethods, our goal is to ensure that you have every possible tool you need to complete your survey research. We also know that your research is only as good as your ability to analyze the data. That is why we provide tools to help make analysis easier for you, especially if you’re using any type of live reporting or notification system that we have available.

One of the techniques we make available on SurveyMethods is the use of points. Points are a weighting system given to specific answers that you use to gain more insight into a respondent.

For example, if you used survey software as a way to test knowledge, and there were 3 wrong answers, one “close” answer, and one right answer, you’d want the right answer to be weighted the most, the wrong answer to be weighted the least, and the close answer to be weighted somewhere in the middle. Then you can run analyses based on total points. Similarly, points may be used in checkbox questions as well.

For example, imagine you’re Apple, and you’re trying to survey people’s use of your own products and their customer loyalty. You may ask a question such as: “Which of these products have you used before?” iPad Windows Phone iPod iPhone If you’re Apple, you don’t actually care if they use the Windows Phone – you’re simply trying to get an idea of how dedicated they are as an Apple customer. What matters most to you is how much they use the other Apple products, so perhaps you give each of the Apple products 10 points, the Windows product 0 points, and then tabulate the total points they receive in order to get a quick bit of data on the customer.

There are many ways to use points in surveys, and they are especially useful when combined with SurveyMethods’ reporting and notification software. For example, imagine you are recruiting for an open position. You can ask applicants a variety of questions about their experience, including the most relevant experience and the least relevant experience, and then weight them by how much you need: “Please tell me which of the following coding languages you know fluently: Java (10 pts) C (5 pts) PHP (10 pts) Ruby (5 pts) HTML (0 pts)” You then ask several questions like this that applicants need to answer before you consider their application.

Once they’ve submitted their application, you can then set up automatic updates using the SurveyMethods survey software platform to be automatically emailed when a very qualified candidate (say, 100 points or higher) has filled out an application. There are plenty of ways to use this information in customer satisfaction, customer profiling, and non-research purposes. With this point system, SurveyMethods makes it possible for you to improve your data collection and analyses, along with the many other tools that you get with our online survey platform.