Scales — Top-2-Box, Reverse Coding and NPS
A 1–5 rating question is usually reported as top-2-box: the share of people who picked one of the two best answers. It is blunt on purpose — an average of 3.4 tells you little, "54% satisfied" is something a manager can act on. The bottom-2-box is the same idea from the other end and is often the more useful number.
Reverse coding matters when a questionnaire mixes positive and negative wording ("I am satisfied" vs "I often think about leaving"). Averaging them raw cancels out real signal. Reverse coding flips the negative item (v becomes min+max−v) so every item points the same way.
NPS only means anything on a 0–10 scale: promoters (9–10) minus detractors (0–6). Computing it on a 1–5 scale is a common mistake, so SenSight leaves it blank there rather than showing a number that looks right and is not.
One trap: if nobody used the ends of your scale, the scale cannot be guessed from the answers. SenSight marks such a column with * — pick the real scale by hand or the boxes are computed on too narrow a range.
Reverse coding matters when a questionnaire mixes positive and negative wording ("I am satisfied" vs "I often think about leaving"). Averaging them raw cancels out real signal. Reverse coding flips the negative item (v becomes min+max−v) so every item points the same way.
NPS only means anything on a 0–10 scale: promoters (9–10) minus detractors (0–6). Computing it on a 1–5 scale is a common mistake, so SenSight leaves it blank there rather than showing a number that looks right and is not.
One trap: if nobody used the ends of your scale, the scale cannot be guessed from the answers. SenSight marks such a column with * — pick the real scale by hand or the boxes are computed on too narrow a range.
Try it in the app
Try: In the Cross-Tab tab, scroll to Scale / Likert Summary → tick Overall_Satisfaction and Score_1_5 → Summarise. Both give the same numbers because one is the wording and the other the score. Now tick R on one of them and watch top and bottom box swap.