Ballot is often used to poll or survey a group at a conference. The two most common criteria used to poll a group are Rating Scale and Multiple Choice.
Rating Scale vs Multiple Choice
Use Rating Scale when you want to ask the same question for a lot of different topics (e.g. How important do you think [topic A, topic B, topic C] is?). The rating scale is used when asking people to pick a value in a range (e.g. Low/High, Good/Bad, Agree/Disagree).
Use Multiple Choice when you want to ask different questions for each topic and/or the criteria values are not related to each other:
Question Length
To understand question length you need to visualize the screen layout. This screenshot applies to both Rating Scale and Multiple Choice criteria:
- The Idea Text
- The Criteria Question
- The Criteria Scales
- The Vote Results
Criteria Scales Length
When polling an audience, it's important that the Criteria Scales are not too long or there may issues with the display. The balance between the bar chart and the labels can be adjusted (for example, click on the # 5, then slide the bar chart to the left), but if the criteria are still too long, the text will be difficult to read. A recommended Criteria Scale Length is 3-5 options with 4-8 words per option.
Report types
Vote Results: Great for showing the way the group voted on one topic and one criteria. Quickly shows agreement, average, and standard deviation.
Scatter Chart (heat map): Great for showing lots of topics across two criteria. Particularly strong when the end of one scale is good or bad.
Column Chart: Although technically similar to a bar chart, this report type is great for showing the difference between two criteria votes across all items. For example, contrast Importance with Effectiveness.
Responses for Select Criteria: A great report to capture all responses for a particular criteria and save to a PDF.
