What is the purpose of the neutral option?
The neutral category provides an option for the respondent who truly does not have an opinion on a question so that they are not forced to respondent positively or negatively.
If you do not include a neutral option, you are forcing employees to make a choice, when in reality there are times when people have no opinion. Without a neutral rating, the tendency is for people to choose the more positive rating, and accordingly, it will falsely skew results towards favorable.
Research confirms that you should not use an even-numbered rating scale (e.g. 4-point or 6-point). TalentMap utilizes the five-point Likert scale, the most common scale in attitudinal research because a five-point scale is widely considered to represent the “natural” number of opinion plateaus or levels.
If you do not include a neutral option, you are forcing employees to make a choice, when in reality there are times when people have no opinion. Without a neutral rating, the tendency is for people to choose the more positive rating, and accordingly, it will falsely skew results towards favorable.
Research confirms that you should not use an even-numbered rating scale (e.g. 4-point or 6-point). TalentMap utilizes the five-point Likert scale, the most common scale in attitudinal research because a five-point scale is widely considered to represent the “natural” number of opinion plateaus or levels.
Updated on: 02/18/2019
Thank you!