Text Entry Question

About Text Entry Questions

Text entry questions allow you to collect open-ended responses from your respondents.

Variations

The text entry question has several variations that change the size and type of the text box. You can access these variations under Text Type in the question editing pane.

Single Line

The single line variation provides respondents with a 1 line text box. While respondents can write responses well beyond the limits of the box, the single line format encourages a more succinct answer.

Multiple Lines and Essay Text Box

The multiple lines and essay text box variations provide respondents with multiple lines, encouraging respondents to provide a longer response. As you can see below, this change is not reflected in the editor, but in the preview of the question.

Password

The password variation provides a single line text box. Any characters typed into the text box are disguised by dots.

Text Entry Validation

Text entry or validation, found under the Response requirements in the editing pane, is unique compared to other types of question validation.

Once you toggle Add validation to the blue “on” setting in this area, you can specify the exact type of response you want (e.g., set Content type to only accept answers in the format of an email address) or a specific length for the response (e.g., 200 characters). Respondents will not be able to move past the question until a correctly formatted response has been entered.

Data Analysis

Once your responses have been collected, Qualtrics offers various methods to create reports both in and out of the platform. From the Reports tab, you can view aggregate data with pre-made reports as well as create your own. From the Data & Analysis tab, you can view and manipulate your survey responses on an individual basis.

Text iQ

You can analyze your text responses using Text iQ to surface sentiment and topic data based on the content of your responses. These results can then be displayed in a report or a dashboard.

Visualizations

There are 2 visualization types available for text entry questions: word cloud and paginated table. For more information on these visualizations please visit the linked visualization support pages.

Downloaded Data Format

Each text entry box in your survey will be shown as a column in your downloaded data, with a row for each response. For most variations, there will be only one text box and so only one column for the question in your file. For the form variation, there are multiple text boxes and so there will be multiple columns.

FAQs