26. Video: Types of Ratings

Different Scales

If you are in control of choosing your rating scale, think of what might be most beneficial to your scenario. If you are working alongside a team TO design the interfaces for how data will be collected, there are number of ideas to keep in mind.

• Do you need to ask questions of your user or can you collect data about their interactions with items?
• If you need to ask questions, how many do you ask?
• How do you word the questions?
• And finally, the question in the above video: what type of scale should you use?

In general, I suggest using the simplest rating that allows you to get whatever questions of interest you have, but there are some important ideas to keep in mind when choosing a particular type of rating. Ratings are a necessary part of working with different recommendation systems, but they aren't a central part of our focus. A good overview of types of ratings and when to use them is also provided here.

Most of these ideas are specific to your use case, and are easy to notice in hindsight. It is simply important to think of this in advance and not completely gloss over possible issues with the data you are collecting and how it connects to the questions you want answered.