feeling positive

Although I understand that they simplify the process of marking tests and correlating results, I have never been fond of multiple-choice-style questions: all too often there are ambiguities that force you to second guess what the examiners want you to answer.

This shouldn’t be a problem when the question is just asking you to rate how you feel about something, but the following question from a recent YouGov survey had me confused:

Just what is the difference between “very positive” and “strongly positive”? And which is the right choice for those who feel emphatically negative?

Of course how we feel about things can change radically, even within a short time span. I took this photo the other evening as I walked along the canal path in the evening sunshine, feeling “slightly positive” about life:

Later the same evening, I tripped and fell, smashing my phone, shredding a perfectly good pair of trousers and scraping a nice half-crown-sized wound on my knee. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t feel quite so positive then.