In all likelihood, you have used a Likert scale (or something you’ve called a Likert scale) in a survey before. It might surprise you to learn that Likert scales are a very specific format and what you have been calling Likert may not be. Not to worry — researchers that have been doing surveys for… Read More »
Card Sort Questions
What is this?
Our Basic and Advanced Card sorting questions allow your respondents to interact with your survey by dragging and dropping images or text blocks one at a time into a selected category (bucket). You can feature an unlimited number of text blocks or uploaded images.
The Advanced Card Sort option also allows for an optional “Lock In” feature that will prevent respondents from moving an image or text box item once they have placed it in a category. If the “Lock In” is activated, the respondent will only see one item at a time.
As these are both custom question types, they do not come with our regular subscriptions, but is available for purchase on the SurveyGizmo Marketplace. You can purchase this additional question type at any time, and you can cancel your subscription to it whenever you’d like!
When would I use this?
A great example of when to use the card sort question would be if you’d like to know what items someone planned on purchasing in the next 12 months. You can several items listed as cards (such as Cell Phones, Television, etc), which they can then drag and drop into various buckets labeled with something like “definitely purchase, probably purchase, unsure, etc,”. This will help your respondents to feel as if they’re interacting with the survey, and will also be visually easy to move around.
The Advanced Card Sort may also be useful if you’d like to restrict people from changing their mind after the fact. This is best used when you’d like to see what people’s first impressions were to the options.
Can I see an example of the two card sorting types?
Most definitely! Please visit our marketplace demo page:
Additional Articles Related to Basic Card Sort
- Marketplace: Basic Card Sort
- Marketplace: Advanced Card Sort
Apr. 17 
Apr. 5