Grids are groups of closely related questions that share the same response categories. In many instances, the grid really has only one “question” that is divided into a number of different categories or subquestions. For example, when asking respondents to rate all of the galleries in a museum, the single question “How interested were you in the museum displays?” might list all of the galleries, providing the same response categories to rate each of them.

The term “grid” comes from the way these questions are typically displayed in a questionnaire The questions are listed vertically and the response categories listed horizontally, forming the rows and columns of a rectangular grid.

In the list of questions, all of this information is collapsed into a single translation column, with the question categories (subquestions) listed first, followed by the shared response categories.