word choice - What preposition does "rate ... criteria" take?


I'm writing up specs for a website with learning materials for our alpha testers to comment on. Among others, I'm describing the rating system: the materials can be rated (...) several criteria (such as usefulness, quality), e.g. by giving 3 stars for usefulness and 5 for quality.


Is "according to" the only proper way to link "rate" and "criteria" in this case? Can we rate by quality? rate on quality? 'rate in quality'?


I would usually just say 'rate the quality', without a preposition or anything, but I can't really use that in a passive sentence about the materials, and I know that even if I change this specific sentence into an active one, I'll need the passive at some point as well...


(please note that I mean the act of rating (ie. giving stars or votes or whatever), not the act of sorting things by their ratings - which is I suspect why the 'by' and 'according to' options don't sound right to me)



Answer



The most obvious rewording that fixes this issue is:



The material's quality can be rated.



But if you want to keep your original form, the best preposition would be:



The material can be rated for quality.



Relevant NGram data for "rated * quality" show that "for" beats out "on" and "by" by significant margins.


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