Dual Negative-Positive Scale

The dual negative-positive scale question randomly assigns respondents to a positive or negative question to rate how much they like or dislike the product on a scale of 1 to 5.

The dual negative-positive scale is best used when you are surveying respondents in different countries. It is effective to minimise acquiescence bias, i.e. the extent to which respondents are biased to agree with the presented statement and make results more comparable across the countries.

For instance, Conjointly’s Claims Test employs the dual negative-positive scale and allows you to efficiently test up to 300 product claims on customer appeal, fit with brand, and diagnostic questions of your choice.

Respondent view

Dual negative-positive scale question outputs

Dual negative-positive questions produce the following outputs for both positive and negative responses:

• The gauge chart showing the overall score.
• Descriptive statistics including number of responses, minimums, means, medians, modes, maximums, and standard deviations for the positive and negative statements.
• The cumulative percentage of responses for top 1 to 4 boxes respectively, and a histogram showing the distribution of response for the positive and negative statements.
• The number of participants who saw the question.

To calculate the overall score, we use the following formula:

As such, the overall score for a dual negative-positive scale could go from -5 to 5. For example, an Overall Score of 4 could be obtained when the Mean of positive questions is the absolute highest (coded as 5) and the Mean of negative questions is the absolute lowest (coded as 1), vice versa.

However, very few values would be outside the range of -3 to +3. Hence, for Claims Tests the colour coding stops outside this range:

The above legend for diagnostics was obtained and refined from our past studies and pilot projects with our FMCG clients and, from our experience, can be applied to most types of consumer or B2B products.

Setting up a dual negative-positive scale question

Follow these steps to set up a dual negative-positive scale question:

1. Add question

Navigate to the Add questions tab and click on the Add question button at the bottom of the page.

On the Add or import questions pop-out, select the Add a new question tab and click on the Dual negative-positive scale question card to add it to the experiment.

2. Edit question options

Once you add the question, you can adjust the following settings:

1. Insert the question text in the text box. You can also include formatting and images.
2. Edit the positive feedback instruction by typing in the positive statement text box.
3. Edit the negative feedback instruction by typing in the negative statement text box.

To add formatting or images to each instruction, click on the settings for that statement. Then check the “Add fancy formatting and pictures to row” checkbox. You can then add formatting or images to the statement.