Questionnaire template scores and scoring methods

The system calculates compliance score and risk score when a respondent completes a questionnaire assessment. How these scores are calculated depends on the scoring method, simple or weighted risk average, that you assign to a questionnaire template.

Use the simple method if the focus of the questionnaire template is at the question level. The question weight defines the importance of each question. To hide all weights and answer scores, disable Weight and score in the Format settings of the questionnaire template.

Use the weighted average method if the focus of the questionnaire template is at the subsection level. Use this method if some subsections have a higher significance than other subsections. The difference between the two methods is that the simple method does not calculate a weighted average at the subsection level, which affects the overall results in the compliance and risk scores.

To plan the scoring for a questionnaire template, perform the following steps:

  • Decide whether to use the simple or weighted average method.
  • Decide what weight to assign to each section and subsection and be consistent.
  • Decide what answer scores you want to apply to single and multiple choice questions. Use a higher answer score for better answers, for example, use 10 for the best answer. Keep the range as small as possible, for example, 1 - 10. Use a larger range only if a question has many answers, for example, more than 10.

    The score for the answers to a multiple choice question is calculated using the following formula where answerSum is the sum of the scores for the answers chosen by the respondent and maxScore is the sum of all possible answers: 

    score = (answerSum * 10 * weight) / maxScore

    In the following example, you have a multiple choice question with a weight of 1 and A, B, C, and D as the possible answers.

    Table 1.
    Answer Score
    A 10
    B 2
    C 1
    D 0

    In this scenario, maxScore = 13. If the respondent chooses answers B and C, then answerSum = 3. Using the formula, score = 2.31.

  • Consider how dependent questions are scored. A respondent's answer to a controlling question can cause a dependent question to be hidden. Only questions visible to the respondent are included in the scoring. Questions that are hidden from the respondent are excluded.
  • Consider that long text, short text, and table questions are excluded from scoring.

For more information about the formulas that are used in scoring, see Questionnaire template scoring formulas.