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Ways to display rankings

Tips for concisely displaying results of ranking choice exercises

Updated at 2019-06-26 17:36:23 UTC
Three circular badges showing ordinal rankings: green circle labeled '1st', blue circle labeled '2nd', and yellow circle labeled '3rd', representing first, second, and third place rankings.

Market research surveys often ask respondents to rank treatments, therapies and different concepts. We can display these ranking questions in Protobi.

In this example respondents were asked to rank ten different concepts from best (1) to worst (10). The image below shows distribution of ranks for two of the ten concepts:

Protobi data view showing Question 6 asking respondents to rank visual concepts A through J from best (1) to worst (10) for PAH patients. Two sub-questions are displayed side by side: Question 6-1 (Rank) for Concept A and Question 6-2 (Rank) for Concept B. Each shows a frequency distribution table with rankings 1st through 10th displayed as values with corresponding percentages and horizontal blue bars. Concept A has 13.3% ranked 1st with strongest showing at 6th (26.7%), while Concept B has 33.3% ranked 1st.

To display all the rankings for all the concepts would include 10 x 10 = 100 results. This is a lot of numbers to present. Maybe we can simplify this...

Compact to 1st

One simple way to summarize rankings is to show how often each concept is ranked first. Since each respondent ranks exactly one product first, this converts a complex ranking grid to a simple single-punch variable.

To do this in Protobi, press the edit icon and select "Compact to..." from the context menu. Then select "Compact to "1st":

Dialog box titled 'Compact to...' with a help icon. The dialog shows two sections: 'Summarize each child by a top-box score...' with two radio button options ('1st' [1] selected with blue filled radio button, and '9th' [9] unselected), and 'Display a summary statistic for each child...' with multiple unselected options including None, Mean, Median, Sum, Min, Max, and Top box (with input field showing 'e.g. 7 or [6,7]'). Below that is 'Common combinations:' section with Percent and Checkbox options. Cancel and Ok buttons appear at bottom.

Voilá...we now see how often each element is selected first. Sort by frequency to see the top picks. Here we see respondents most often ranked concepts B and G first. 

Protobi data view showing Question 6 (Ranked answers) compacted to 1st place rankings. The data is sorted by frequency showing all ten concepts (B, G, A, J, D, E, C, F, H, I) as rows with blue arrow indicators. Each row shows the concept letter, percentage ranked first, and a blue horizontal bar. Concept B leads at 33.3%, followed by G at 26.7%, while concepts C, F, H, and I show 0.0%.

Show rankings as stacked bar charts

You may also want to see how often products are selected second, third, fourth, etc. Showing each concept as a stacked distribution allows us to see the whole picture as well. Press the edit icon and select "Display stacked".

Now each concept is shown as a stacked bar chart, with colors indicating a rank. The numbers still show how often each is ranked first. By default, Protobi colors from blue to green in ascending order. So here 1 is darkest blue and 10 is darkest green:

Protobi data view showing Question 6 with stacked bar charts for all ten concepts. Each concept (B, G, A, J, D, E, C, F, H, I) is displayed as a row with a full-width stacked horizontal bar showing the distribution of all rankings from 1st to 10th. The bars use a color gradient from dark blue (1st) through lighter blues and grays to dark green (10th). The percentage values displayed still show 1st place rankings (33.3% for B, 26.7% for G, etc.), while the stacked bars reveal the complete ranking distribution for each concept.

Sort colors descending

With rankings 1st is better than 10th, so we might want to show 1st as green and 10th as blue. Reversing colors is currently an advanced feature. Press the edit icon, select "Edit JSON..." and set "colors":"descending":

Protobi data view showing Question 6 with reversed color scheme in stacked bars. Each concept (B, G, A, J, D, E, C, F, H, I) displays a full-width stacked horizontal bar with colors now ranging from dark green (1st) through lighter greens, grays, and lighter blues to dark blue (10th). This reversed color scheme makes better rankings (1st) appear as green and worse rankings (10th) as blue, providing more intuitive visualization where green represents positive performance.

Compact to 1st, 2nd or 3rd

In this example we can see that Concepts D and E are rarely chosen 1st, but are very often selected as 2nd or 3rd. This could be a useful marketing insight.

Maybe we'd like to show how often each product is chosen 1st, 2nd or 3rd to get a more robust metric. Press the edit icon and select "Compact to..." from the context menu. Then select "Compact to Top Box" and enter 1,2,3. The numbers now show how often each product is ranked in the top three:

Protobi data view showing Question 6 compacted to top 3 rankings (1st, 2nd, or 3rd), now sorted differently to reflect this combined metric. Concepts D and G lead at 60.0% each, followed by B and E at 46.7%. The stacked bars continue to show the full ranking distribution with the descending green-to-blue color scheme, but the displayed percentages now represent the combined frequency of being ranked in the top three positions rather than just first place.

Partial rankings

Here, each respondent gave a complete ranking for each product. For many products, perhaps your survey asks each respondent to rank only their top three choices. In this case, the value [NA] would represent "Not in top three." You'd want to consider these values in the distributions and summary scores.

To always display missing values in Protobi:

  • Press the edit icon and choose "More properties"
  • Under "Show missing values" select "Yes"

Note: if your survey also has skip logic, missing values might indicate "not asked." In which case, you'd want to also specify a filter so ranking results are shown only for respondents who completed the exercise.