Best Of
12 Best Ranking Questions Examples To Use In 2024
Article written by Kate Williams
Product Marketing Manager at SurveySparrow
15 min read
9 March 2026
Best Of
Article written by Kate Williams
Product Marketing Manager at SurveySparrow
15 min read
9 March 2026
Imagine analyzing a survey where no two people from your target audience want the same feature. What an uphill task for the decision-makers!
Their jaws would drop. They’ll scratch their heads and scream internally to find the point of surveying if it’s not helping them decide better.
But when you know about ranking questions examples, you can prevent this from happening. That’s where surveys would accumulate data to help teams make faster and better decisions.
Here, we’ll give 12 ranking questions examples for three use cases that are of utmost importance for every survey campaign.
In this blog, we’ll cover:
A ranking question is a type of survey question that asks respondents to compare and arrange multiple options based on their preferences. The arrangements are most to least preferred, or vice versa.
Survey ranking questions do the job of finding what clicks well with the customers, employees, teachers, and students among all the present options. Using these results, companies, and educational institutions make necessary changes, correctly upgrade, or adopt new methodologies that yield the intended results.
You now know what survey ranking questions are and what we mean when we say ‘ranking questions examples’.
That means it’s time to let the cat out of the bag …(drumrolls)… and give 12 ranking survey questions as examples in these three categories. Find the perfect space, grab your cuppa, and don’t miss a word here. You’ll thank us later!
Here are the 12 best ranking questions examples to ask your customers and target audience:
This question is a perfect example of ranking survey questions, as it allows survey-takers to know the most prevalent problem faced in their industry. The focus then shifts to finding solutions to the top two problems. Why? Because this is where the true potential lies!
Market research is not always about the target market, you know. Many a time, it’s about finding your customers’ perceptions of your products. What do they like the most about one of your products, and what do they don’t? For any organization, knowing the answers to this is a superpower.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Your products and offerings aren’t different, either. They also can’t be perfected right away. What’s required is constant chipping and changing. And that comes from a question like this, where the target market ranks features they most wish to see in a product of your industry, let’s say smartwatches.
This survey ranking question will again let you and your team pivot, making the product better. The only difference, you’ll survey the existing customers, and the options included will be the top four or five features of a particular product.
“If you think user research is expensive, you should look at the cost of building the wrong thing.” ― Mario Maruffi
Mario said all that there is to say about the importance of this ranking question example.
This question isn’t just applicable to software. For instance, there’s a neat example of a rank order question in the SurveySparrow template below. Click to start using it for free.
Food Preference Questionnaire Template
Use This TemplateOne of those ranking questions examples that clearly highlight what makes your product(s) exceptional and what doesn’t. If you’re gunning for sustained business growth, you need to (absolutely need to!) know about this. We cannot emphasize it further.
While knowing what feature will make your product indispensable is vital, it’s also crucial to understand what features, product changes or service issues will make customers leave for pastures new. This survey ranking question is how you’ll know that.
When entering a new industry, it’s a ‘men vs. boys’ scenario. The heavyweights of the industry are taking the majority market share, and you have to take that away from them. It’s a tough task that becomes tougher when you don’t know who these competitors are.
Don’t do that. List your prime competitors using this rank order question.
This would highlight the flexibility of repayment that your target market wants. If you can give them what they want, (swoosh…) magic happens!
This ranking question will highlight two things:
Steve Jobs was a huge believer in using customer experience to build and optimize products. This ranking survey question will highlight what your audience expects from customer service and the customer success teams.
One of the best ranking questions examples is that kills two birds with one arrow.
How?
You’re giving importance to your long-standing customers, which they all want, and getting to know what they want next in terms of products, features, or services.
At SurveySparrow, from 12 questions types and question library, this is the most used one by our clients, and rightly so!
Using ranking survey questions becomes crucial for employees, as your HR team finds out what culture, work, appreciation type, and managerial style they prefer. That ultimately helps in upping the employee engagement and satisfaction levels. And you already know what happy employees can do!
Here are the 12 ranking questions examples, then:
Every organization needs to provide benefits that resonate well with employees. Otherwise, it won’t bring the intended satisfaction levels for them.
For this very reason, this rank order survey question becomes really crucial and our first example of this category.
Out of the 12 ranking questions examples, this one finds employee motivation level the best.
Use it in your employee satisfaction surveys, and voila… you’ll know how motivated they are to work for your organization.
Without the right tools and software, work in 2023 doesn’t happen rightly. This question highlights what tools employees need and what they don’t.
The work culture is the spine of every organization, big or small. The pandemic showed its importance further, and this question is the perfect way to understand what factors contribute to a healthy work culture according to your employees.
After work culture, the next most essential aspect for every company is the managerial or leadership style. The right leadership can work wonders, and taking your employees’ views becomes pivotal in bringing the right manager and managerial style into action.
Soft skills, technical, leadership, or culture building training. Whatever would help employees get better at their work should get implemented. This ranking question helps find that out.
This question is important to ask as you get an outside perspective on what your organization means or stands for in the eyes of the customer. But the catch here is that your employees will rank the options here.
This question is for dissatisfied employees. But there’s no harm in asking everyone, too. They’ll rank their choices and the changes will make the workplace happier for them.
Whether or not they admit it, all employees wait for good recognition and appreciation every year or quarter. Sometimes they’re satisfied with the process, and sometimes they aren’t. It’s crucial to keep bettering the recognition process. For that very reason, this survey ranking question is an automatic inclusion in your employee surveys.
Every elite organization… literally every elite organization prepares futures leaders that can take them forward. This simple question starts finding them.
“Teamwork makes the dream work.”
It’s a famous phrase, and one that is tested when employees rank the options describing their team. You’ll figure out when something’s not right from the answers. That would allow you to shuffle things and bring better team cohesion. And that’s pivotal for continued business success.
Working from home came to light in the pandemic’s wake, and although things are cool with this new way of working, there’s no denying that it can get better.
What’s best than asking all your employees to rank options that might make WFH more efficient, comfortable, and hence better?
An outstanding teacher has always been pivotal for the success of humanity since times eternity. But how to find such teachers?
Well, one way is short-listing the resumes and interviewing interested candidates. That’s the traditional method. We’re in 2023, so let’s skip the traditional here and give you 12 ranking questions examples to find quality teachers that can make a difference for schools and colleges.
This ranking question will reveal how a candidate likes to teach and include his/her class in the process. This will also somewhat show the personality he/she has.
One of the few ranking questions examples to show if a candidate is seriously considering teaching, or just as a part-time profession, as money and other career opportunities are going to be the options here among others.
The teacher applying at a particular school or college must know the strengths, weaknesses, and particularly their vision. And they’ll rank the options correctly if they’ve done their homework well.
So, ask potential teacher candidates this ranking question and you’ll get a good idea of who all are not the right fit. That’s just as important as finding the right candidate, honestly.
Curious yet notorious, introvert, a loud personality, etc. We’ve all heard these personality types. They fill the classrooms of schools and colleges with these and even more distinct personalities. And it’s crucial to understand what types can a particular teacher handle the best. This question would do the job.
Again, if the potential teacher has done his/her homework well, they’ll rank the options correctly.
This survey ranking question reveals whether a candidate will give a long-term commitment or not.
By looking at the results, the evaluator will observe what the strengths of each candidate are. It could be purely teaching, or a mixture of academic and co-curricular management or he/she could be a master manager.
Since many schools and colleges allow for Pell Grant aid students it’s good to know whether the candidate will be able to help them out in dealing with any curricular issues that may come from that.
You know what you need from the candidate to handle responsibilities, and if they fit the bill here, an interview round should be the next step.
This is where you’ll encounter the growth mindset of a potential teacher. For any school or college to remain a leader, its teachers need to have a leadership mindset where they’re willing to take risks for growth.
Analyzing the answers to this will again reveal whether a candidate is serious about the teacher’s role.
As evidenced throughout the pandemic, technology is here to stay and continue supporting humans. Even the education sector, which was supposed to be the least technologically reliant, got supported well by it. You should expect the candidates and even the existing teachers to understand the technology and know-how it’s going to help them teach better.
This rank order question depicts if a teacher has an inclusive nature towards all its students or not. If not, it’s a big red flag.
Constant innovation is how things continue getting better, and the education sector needs continual innovation, too.
Knowing your teacher’s and potential teacher’s opinions about this would reveal how they can contribute to this innovation in the future.
Before we wrap up, why not quench your curiosity by answering three FAQs on ranking survey questions?
Heads up, you’re gonna love our analogy (like seriously love it!).
“Can you please arrange them in order of your preference?”
“What is the order in which you’d like all things?”
“How would you like to rank all choices?”
If you’re hearing statements like these, means you’re hearing a ranking question. It’s this simple to interpret survey ranking questions.
Imagine this.
You’re in your favorite food joint, and you’re their lucky draw winner for the day. As a result, you’re getting all their lip-smacking foods for free. But you can’t order them all at once. Go one by one.
Aren’t you gutted? You wanted it all together, didn’t you? Now, you’re deciding on what to order first and what would be your last order. This ranking that you’re giving is a rank order, and the entire question type is called a rank order scale.
Damn… we’re feeling hungry now.
Look at these two scenarios.
“How much do you like ice cream?”
“Very!” You replied.
This is an example of a rating scale, as here, we see the strength of an option.
The next one…
“How would rank ice cream, pastry, and pies based on your likeness?
“Ice cream, pies, and pastry. This would be my order.”
This is an example of a ranking scale, as here, we observed the priority among all options.
That’s the primary difference between the two scales. One measures the strength of an option either numerically or superlatively, and the other shows a priority among all available options.
Yes. Let nothing stop you from conducting the finest rank order survey questions. Be it for market research, your employees, or for schools or colleges, we’re here to support you all along the way.
How?
SurveySparrow comes with twelve different question types for all your survey needs, and we have an extensive library for ranking survey questions. You can use that directly, or our team will help you create new questions that do the job and will be there to support you until the very end. That’s something we feel proud about. Talk to us, then. Let’s find synergy to make your survey campaigns a roaring success.
Thousands of brands trust SurveySparrow to turn feedback into growth. Try it free today!
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