Ranking question

Ask visitors to put a list of options in order of preference, shuffle the starting order, set a default, and read the average rank in Insights.

A ranking question hands the visitor a list and asks them to sort it: most preferred at the top, least at the bottom. Where a multiple choice question tells you which option won, a ranking tells you how every option placed against every other, which is what you need to weigh priorities or habits rather than pick a favourite.

A published ranking question, its options each a tile the visitor can drag

How to create a ranking question

Type /ranking, or press + and search for Ranking, to insert the question. The picker describes it as "Use this to rank options in order of preference or importance. Respondents can drag and drop the options into the desired order." Then write the options the visitor is to sort, one per row, the way you would under any choice question. Bulk insert options in the block menu takes a long list at once.

Ranking chosen from the slash menu, then the options typed one per row

On the published form each option is a tile, and the whole tile is the grab target: press anywhere on it and drag it to a new position. Until the list has been touched each tile shows a faint up-down marker; once the visitor moves one, every tile shows its rank number, starting at 1 at the top. The list can also be sorted from the keyboard.

A published list sorted by dragging a tile, every tile then showing its rank number

Randomize ranking options

A visitor who does not touch the list submits it as it was drawn, so the starting order matters. To take that bias out, open the block's settings from the handle in its margin and turn on Randomize options; the published page then draws the tiles in a shuffled order, and Lock options in place pins any that should not move.

Randomize options switched on, which draws the tiles in a shuffled order

Add a default answer

To start the list with a chosen option at the top, turn on Default answer in the block's settings and type that option's text exactly as it appears, or pick a field whose answer names one. Several options separated by commas are placed in that order, and everything unnamed follows in the order you wrote it. Pre-populate form fields covers defaults in general.

Default answer typed in, which starts the list with a chosen option at the top

Reading the results

In the Submissions table a ranking is one cell: the options in the order the visitor left them, joined with commas. The CSV export carries the same.

The Insights tab does the arithmetic. Each option is a row with its place by average rank, its label and the average itself; hover a row for the "Average rank" tip and click it to open a Rank / Responses / Percent table showing how the responses that placed the option landed across every position.