An anchor is the word (or words) shown to survey respondents from which they choose their responses. For example, a 5-point satisfaction scale may be anchored with the text Very Dissatisfied, Somewhat Dissatisfied, Neutral, Somewhat Satisfied, and Very Satisfied (which corresponds to the values 1-5 used for statistical analysis). In some cases, the researcher may only label the endpoints (in this example, Very Dissatisfied and Very Satisfied which are the 1 and 5 values from our 5-point scale). Some research suggests that data reliability is higher when all points are anchored, though market researchers sometimes choose to only label the endpoints based on audience and other considerations.
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