The Improvement tab re-orders topic questions by how much the score has changed into one of three categories:

• Rising: these scores have significantly improved
• Stable: these scores have not significantly changed
• Falling: these scores have significantly declined

We use “significant” in a technical sense: a change in the average score from one measure to the next which is very unlikely to be explained by chance alone. A significant change is a reflection of a true change in feeling.

How we determine if a score has changed significantly

To work out whether changes to scores represent a real difference to people’s experiences, Friday makes use of our extensive historical datasets of scores, benchmarks and a confidence level of 90% to give a range within which the change could be due to chance.

Friday also takes into account the number of people who have responded. This is because the smaller the group of people, the bigger the score has to change to be classified as significantly rising or falling. As a group size gets larger, even small changes in scores become significant.

For example, if your Support team of 10 people had a Feedback score of 56 in June and 66 in September, this 10-point change would not be considered significant (it is within the range of chance) and so Friday would show the score as stable. At the same time, a shift in score from 56 to 66 for a department of 100 people would be significant and so Friday would show the score as rising.

If the Support team’s Feedback score is 70 rather than 66 in September, this is a significant improvement for a group of 10 people and so Friday would show the score as rising. Note, to ensure a change in score is really significant, we use the smallest number of people who have responded across the two time periods.

Read more about acting on significant changes in your scores