Visualizing Likert Scale Data
Same data, displayed seven different ways
Working with research and evaluations teams, I’m often faced with the question of how to effectively display Likert scale data. If you are not familiar with the term, a Likert scale, named after American psychologist Rensis Likert, measures a response to a closed-ended question on a rating scale of how much you agree or disagree, often with a neutral option in-between. A typical five-point scale may include answers: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree.
I regularly use a five-point Likert scale format to evaluate my Design and Data Visualisation short course in order to gain specific feedback on how participants rated the quality and usefulness of each session. The challenge for people like me is, having collected the detailed data, how can it be displayed most effectively, in a way that is easy for readers to understand and interpret?
This month, I decided to give myself a challenge: take the same data, from a five-point Likert scale, and display it in several different ways. I came up with seven different options, some much better than others. Let me walk you through.
To begin with, this is the example data I have used:
