30+ ranking survey questions with examples & tips

The best decisions come from understanding not just what people like but what they value most.

For example, if your company is planning an office event but isn’t sure which option employees prefer, a ranking survey question can help. Unlike rating scales or multiple-choice questions, ranking forces respondents to prioritize their choices.

Let’s say HR presents three options: (a) a lunch and learn, (b) a walkathon, and (c) a mindfulness session. By asking employees to rank these in order of preference, you’ll uncover which event they truly value—not just tolerate.

Curious about how ranking questions work? Read on for tips, best practices, and 30+ examples for marketers, researchers, and HR professionals.

A ranking survey question asks respondents to rank choices from most to least preferred, revealing how they prioritize options relative to each other.

This type of survey question is ideal when you need to force a choice. Ranking questions differ from multiple-choice and rating questions because they don’t offer a “neutral” or “neither agree nor disagree” answer option.

Ranking questions are commonly used in market research, customer satisfaction surveys, and employee feedback surveys. 

For example, in the image below, respondents rearrange the options to fit their preferences.

It’s important to note that ranking questions should only be used when you know people will have an opinion on the options. For instance, a person with gluten intolerance may not be able to have most of these dessert options, which can impact the results. 

Related: Ranking vs. rating explained

Whether you're a market researcher, employer, educator, or business owner, these questions can offer valuable insights when used strategically. To help illustrate their versatility, let’s look at sample ranking questions tailored to each of the categories below.

Related: How to create a ranking question

According to Forbes, 85% of customers are willing to go out of their way for better service. To validate this for your customer base, you could ask this ranking question:

Additional customer ranking question examples:

3.   Rank the following reasons you choose a specific brand.

4.   Rank these delivery factors by importance.

5.   Rank the following shopping frustrations.

6.  Rank these loyalty program features based on what makes you sign up.

7.   Rank these email types based on which you’re most likely to open from a brand.

8.   Rank the following website features based on what improves your shopping experience most.

Ranking survey questions offer valuable insights by helping you uncover true priorities and make meaningful comparisons. Read on to discover the key benefits of using this question type in your research.

Ranking questions are incredibly helpful for uncovering survey takers' true priorities and preferences. By asking participants to rank items, you prompt them to make direct comparisons, revealing what matters most.

For example, you could ask employees to rank team-building activities based on their level of interest. This allows you to identify the most consistently preferred option, enabling you to choose an activity with confidence that aligns with the team’s preferences.

Ranking questions are a powerful tool for decision-making, especially when you need to break a tie between top choices. If you're deciding between two or three leading options, asking respondents to rank them forces a clear preference, revealing which option truly stands out.

By having survey takers prioritize a short list, you gain sharper insights into what matters most, helping you make more confident, data-driven decisions.

Response bias occurs when respondents answer questions inaccurately, often due to social pressure or the desire to give a more acceptable response.

This is common with questions about personal habits or opinions. For instance, someone might underreport how often they drink alcohol to appear more socially responsible.

Minimizing response bias is essential for collecting reliable data. Survey ranking questions help reduce this bias by prompting respondents to make relative judgments rather than selecting a single, potentially “correct” answer.

By comparing multiple items, participants are more likely to reveal their true priorities, leading to more honest and unbiased insights.

Another key benefit of ranking survey questions is their ability to produce clear, comparative insights. By asking respondents to order items by preference, importance, or frequency, you can directly see how different factors measure up against one another.

Ranking responses reveal which options consistently rise to the top or sink to the bottom, helping you uncover audience priorities, emerging trends, and perception gaps.

This clarity supports more informed, data-driven decisions focused on what truly matters to your target audience.

Ranking survey questions are a powerful way to uncover preferences and spot patterns in respondent behavior.

Unlike multiple-choice questions, which capture only a single selection, ranking questions reveal the full order of preference—giving you deeper, more nuanced insights into what your audience values most.

This makes them especially useful when you need to understand not just what people choose but how they prioritize their options.

Ranking questions should be used sparingly to maintain their effectiveness, according to SurveyMonkey Research Scientist Wendy Smith. 

“It’s a modern approach, but it’s more restrictive than choice modeling,” says Smith. "It’s a forced-choice question. You are getting the top stated choice, but that choice may not reflect true feelings."

Survey ranking questions work best when you want relative preferences. For example, if you want to find the top two dessert choices for an office party, a ranking question helps you identify the favorite and the runner-up.

Survey ranking is also great for tiebreakers with a set group of items on which people have an opinion. As long as the question pertains to something people will have an opinion about, it should work effectively. 

Here are a few specific scenarios when you might choose to use a ranking survey question: 

Ranking questions come in several formats, from simple rank order to interactive drag-and-drop. Understanding these different approaches can help you choose the right format for your goals—let’s explore each one and when to use it.

Forced ranking questions require respondents to assign a unique rank to each item in a list, with no ties allowed. This approach encourages clear distinctions in preference or importance, helping reveal true priorities and resolve ambiguous feedback, especially when definitive choices are needed.

Partial ranking asks respondents to rank only a select number of items from a larger list, such as choosing their top three favorites out of ten options. This approach reduces cognitive load and prevents respondents from ranking items they may not know or care about.

Pairwise comparison presents respondents with two options at a time and asks them to choose their preferred one. This process repeats across all possible pairs in the set, revealing relative preferences through direct, head-to-head comparisons.

Image ranking uses visuals instead of text as response options, allowing respondents to rank images based on preference or appeal. For example, a logo testing survey might ask customers to rank logo concepts from best to worst, making this method especially valuable for marketing teams’ testing.

Drag-and-drop ranking enables survey respondents to reorder options by dragging them into their preferred sequence, making the ranking process interactive, intuitive, quick, and user-friendly.

Good survey design improves data quality. That’s why we’re sharing some tips for writing effective ranking questions. 

The list should be no more than three to five options to rank. You’ll want to keep respondents’ attention and keep the list as simple as possible.

Ensure the options you choose are relevant, comparable, and written clearly. Try to keep the options to as few words as possible. Short phrases or single-word options are best.

Sending your survey to a small sample before launching the official survey can help you test the quality and effectiveness of your questions. Pre-testing alerts you if respondents find any of the questions confusing or too complicated.

Ranking questions can be highly effective, but they shouldn’t be used excessively within the same survey, as it can overwhelm respondents and cause survey fatigue. A good rule of thumb is to have no more than two or three ranking questions in a single survey. 

You’ll want to ensure the survey builder you use supports a seamless user experience for ranking questions. SurveyMonkey offers ranking question formatting, allowing users to order options according to their preferences. 

Ranking survey questions can be incredibly useful for discovering people’s true preferences. Whether you’re hosting an employee movie night or evaluating product features, ranking questions can be helpful. This type of question encourages respondents to make a decisive and honest choice.

SurveyMonkey helps teams use ranking questions to survey their target audiences. Create quizzes and surveys at the click of a button to gather valuable data with SurveyMonkey. Our survey and quiz maker enables you to create professional surveys with little effort.