Understand how to calculate the average of a question
The score for all questions, regardless of their scoring scale, is always calculated out of 10 or as a percentage (%) so that questions can be compared to each other.
The result of this calculation is a number between 0 and 10 (0% and 100% if the result is displayed as a percentage). A score close to 0 means that the majority of employees selected the lowest option. Conversely, a score close to 10 means that the majority of employees selected the highest option.
Calculation method
Below you will find the calculation formula. Scroll down a bit to see a concrete example.
| Element of the formula | Definition |
| Omin | This is the minimum option value. On a scale of 1 to 7, Omin is 1. On a scale of 0 to 10, Omin is 0.
On a multiple choice scale, Omin is always 1. |
| Omax | This is the maximum option value. On a scale of 1 to 7, Omax is 7. On a scale of 0 to 10, Omax is 10.
On a multiple choice scale, Omax is always the
number of options. |
| % Option ? | This is the percentage of respondents who answered this option. |
Why can't we just divide by the number of options?
You may wonder why, in a question from 1 to 5 for example, we have to subtract Omin from each answer option and use the denominator (Omax - Omin).
The easiest way is to illustrate it with an example:
Imagine that 100% of respondents answered the middle option: neither agree nor disagree.
If we applied the following simple formula: (100% * 3/ 5), the result would be 60%. However, this is incorrect because 100% of respondents assign the neutral value, so the result must be 50%.
The correct result for this question is (100% * (3 - 1) / (5 - 1) = 50%.
Not using the correct formula will always create a positive bias in your results, regardless of the distribution of options chosen.
Example of calculation
Consider the multiple choice question below:
The values are as follows:
- Option #1: Strongly Disagree: 7%.
- Option #2: Somewhat Disagree: 0
- Option #3: Neither agree nor disagree: 27
- Option #4: Somewhat agree: 33
- Option #5: Strongly agree: 33
NOTE: Manual calculation of the total for each option may not equal 100% due to rounding of percentages to zero decimal places.
Application of the fomula
- Omin is 1 since we will use the order of choices as the value of the option.
- Omax is 5 since there are 5 choices of answers.
- The wording (% Option 1) equals the percentage of respondents who selected option 1. In the example question above, 7% of people selected option #1, strongly disagree.
The formula for our example is therefore :
Note: As you can see in this example, the formula appears to give a result of 71.25% when the platform shows 72%. This is simply a matter of rounding. The platform uses exact values while we used rounded values. The perfect result is the one displayed in the platform. Note that there is no difference in interpretation between 71.25% and 72%!
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