Using Ranking Questions in Healthcare Surveys

Ranking questions help respondents prioritize their preferences or experiences by ordering options from most to least important. This question type provides rich data on how patients prioritize different aspects of their care, helping healthcare providers better understand which factors are most significant to patient satisfaction. 

What do ranking questions look like?

Ranking questions ask respondents to order a set of options based on their preferences or experiences. You might ask patients to rank order the factors they look at when choosing a healthcare provider, from the ones they find most important and impactful, to the least important:

When patients rank these items, they’re providing insight into what they value most, giving care providers a clearer picture of where to focus their improvement efforts.

Here are some more examples:

1. Please rank the importance of the following aspects of your visit (1 = most important, 5 = least important):

• Physician’s communication skills
• Timeliness of your appointment
• Comfort and cleanliness of the facility
• Ease of appointment scheduling
• Availability of aftercare information
  
  

2. Rank the helpfulness of the following support services during your visit (1 = most helpful, 5 = least helpful):

• Nursing assistance
• Administrative support (check-in, check-out)
• Explanation of treatment options
• Pain management services
• Post-treatment follow-up
  
  

3. Please rank the factors that influenced your satisfaction with the facility (1 = most influential, 5 = least influential):

• Professionalism of medical staff
• Waiting time for appointments
• Cleanliness and hygiene standards
• Access to updated medical technology
• Location and accessibility of the facility

Best applications for ranking questions

If you’re looking to compare how different patient demographics (e.g., age, treatment type) prioritize aspects of their care, ranking questions can help highlight differences in expectations and experiences across groups.

Do they value treatment effectiveness over short wait times? Are staff interactions more significant than the condition of your facility?

Ranking questions are particularly useful when evaluating satisfaction across several variables. They can show which factors drive patient satisfaction the most and where improvements would yield the greatest impact.

The pros and cons of ranking questions

Ranking questions are great for identifying patient priorities via their clear, structured insights. However,  they also come with certain drawbacks — they can be cognitively challenging, and there is a risk they might potentially oversimplify complex experiences. 

Weighing the pros and cons of ranking questions helps ensure they are used appropriately and that your survey design accounts for their limitations.

The pros include the following:

• Provide clear priorities: Ranking questions force respondents to make decisions about what is most important. They might rank “treatment effectiveness” higher than “waiting time,” signaling that clinical outcomes are more important to them than convenience.
• Offer richer data for analysis: Ranking questions go beyond satisfaction, allowing clinics to see how patients value various aspects. If “doctor’s communication” consistently ranks higher than other factors, healthcare organizations know that investing in communication training for staff could have a large impact on satisfaction.
• Simplify complex decision-making: Patients often have multifaceted experiences with many touchpoints. Ranking questions simplify this complexity by allowing patients to organize their thoughts in a structured way, providing clearer insights into their overall experience.

The cons of using ranking questions include — but are not limited to — the following challenges:

• Can be overwhelming for respondents: Thoughtfully ranking 10+ different items can be cognitively challenging for respondents, especially in healthcare settings where patients may already be stressed or fatigued.
• Difficult to analyze when data is ambiguous: While ranking provides prioritization, it doesn’t reveal the intensity of those preferences. If a patient ranks “staff friendliness” first and “facility cleanliness” second, the ranking doesn’t show whether the difference between these two is significant or marginal. Similarly, if “facility cleanliness” is ranked last, without additional data, you won’t know if cleanliness was a major issue or just less important compared to the others.
• Limited use in complex feedback: Ranking questions are best for straightforward, prioritized feedback. When patients have complex experiences or nuanced opinions, ranking can oversimplify their feedback and fail to capture the depth of their experience.‍
• Inflexibility with tied preferences: It’s not a good idea to force respondents to differentiate between options, especially if they don’t have strong preferences or feel that certain aspects are equally important. The side effects can stem from frustration to inauthentic responses.

Conclusion

Ranking questions offer a great way to understand patient priorities and compare preferences across different aspects of care. While they provide clear insights into what patients value most, they can also be cognitively challenging and may oversimplify complex feedback. 

When used correctly, ranking questions can reveal valuable data on patient preferences, but it’s important to balance them with other question types to ensure you’re capturing the full range of patient experiences. 

‍Keep the ranking options concise and combine them with follow-up questions — you’ll get more detailed and actionable insights.