Survey Basic Overview

About the Survey Editor

Surveys are created and edited in the survey editor.

From the Projects page, open the Survey tab in any one of three ways:

1. Choose Create new project.
2. Click on any existing project in your Projects List.
3. Pick Edit Survey from the actions dropdown menu.

As the Survey tab opens, you’ll the see the survey editor’s most prominent features:

1. Question block
2. Question editing area
3. Question editing pane
4. Survey toolbar

Block Basics

All survey questions are created, edited, and stored inside blocks. Every survey includes at least one block initially called the Default Question Block.

Three elements appear in every block:

1. Block name: Change at any time by clicking in the name box and typing a new name.
2. Add Block: Lets you create new blocks.
3. Block Options menu: Displays an array of one-click block editing choices.

Blocks are best understood with a couple of examples:

• Many surveys start with an initial Demographics block which directs different respondents (e.g., male/female, younger/older, education, etc.) to distinct survey question blocks that precisely target their needs.
• An application of multiple blocks is revealed in the image below where a starting demographic block collects first and last names. In the following blocks, the names can be recycled to address respondents by their names with the use of Embedded Data logic. The names entered can also be used to generate or update contact lists.
• Additionally, you could channel the various demographics down different survey pathways (i.e., one path for men and another for women) with Branch Logic.
• You can opt certain respondents out of the survey based on quotas achieved for a specific demographic (i.e., quotas based on age, gender, or income level).
• Finally, you could display different survey endings to different demographic groups.

Let’s look a little deeper:

1. A second block (Easy Questions Block) appears below a renamed Default Question Block (now called the Demographics Block).
2. The Block Options menu reveals block-level commands, such as Move Block Up/Down, Question Randomization, and Collapse Questions (which shrinks a block’s questions for easier viewing).
3. Blocks are separated by a spacer (which includes a handy Add Block command).

For simple surveys, placing all of your questions in a single block is just fine. But as surveys become more intricate, organizing questions into multiple blocks allows the application of sophisticated Survey Flow logic, branches, randomization, authentication, and Embedded Data logic.

Visit the Block Options page to learn how to take full advantage of blocks in building sophisticated Survey Flows.

Question & Editing Pane Basics

Initially, a default multiple-choice question will be inserted into your Default Question Block. This ensures that your block has at least one question to start with.

1. To add additional questions to a block, click Create a New Question.
   
2. To add more questions, hover over any existing question and click the green plus (+) buttons (either above or below the existing question).
   
3. Click the red minus (–) sign to delete a question.
   Qtip: You can recover deleted questions from the Trash at the bottom of the survey. See the Deleting Questions section for more details.
4. Move questions up or down in the survey with the question reorder controls to the left of the question editing area.

Editing Question Text

You’ll write questions, edit question text, and apply text formatting in the question editing area.

1. Click in the question text (or answer choice) text boxes to enter or edit your text.
2. Click the Piped Text button to grab information from previous questions and blocks (e.g., pulling in someone’s name from a Demographics Block to personalize a question).
3. Click the Rich Content Editor button to format your text by changing fonts, font sizes, applying bolds, bullets, italics, and more.

Change Question Types

When you first click Create Project, a multiple choice question is inserted into your first question block by default. However, you might want to change it to another type or style of question. Use the question editing pane to choose among more than a dozen question types (e.g., Multiple Choice, Rank Order, Heat Map, NPS, Graphic Slider, among many others).

To change question types:

1. Open the editing pane by clicking on a question.
2. Click the dropdown menu under Change Question Type.
   
3. Pick a new question type from the list.
4. Observe that the editing pane displays samples of each question type as you scroll over them.

Editing Pane Options

You can also use the editing pane to apply the specific options available for each unique question type (e.g., Automatic Choices, Vertical or Horizontal positioning, Force Response, etc.).

Let’s demonstrate how these commands work with the Matrix Table question type:

1. Statements: Use the + or – buttons to increase or decrease the number of possible statements.
   
2. Scale Points: Use the + or – buttons to increase or decrease the number of possible scale points.
3. Matrix Type: In this case, choose whether the matrix is formatted as a series of Likert scales, as a bipolar table, or more.
4. Validation Options: Click Force Response if you want to require a respondent to answer this question before continuing.
5. Actions: Lets you Copy, Move, and Preview questions. Add Page Break lets you break questions out on separate pages so the respondent won’t see too many questions on a single screen. You can also add Display and Skip logic to the question, in addition to notes.
   

Since there are more than a dozen different question types with a multiplicity of editing pane options for each, you’ll want to explore each of these more in the Creating Questions and Question Types support pages.

Toolbar Basics

The toolbar manages your survey’s design options, security settings, and logic structures (i.e., Survey Flow). It also lets you preview, publish, and search your survey.

Look & Feel

Your survey’s look and feel must hit the mark. It has been proven again and again that clear, good-looking surveys get better response rates.

The Look & Feel menu opens settings that will help you design your survey, like choosing a theme, fonts, colors, and headers. Here you can apply your institution’s logos and color schemes.

You can also set a variety of survey experience choices, such as displaying a progress bar or having questions highlight upon selection.

Survey Flow

The Survey Flow is a block-level view of your survey and details the order in which blocks are displayed to your respondents. From here you can customize where respondents go in your survey, what they see, and what they don’t see.

You can perform simple tasks like rearranging blocks, or you can add elements like Branch Logic that directs and personalizes your respondents’ survey experience.

By selecting Add Below or Add a New Element Here in the Survey Flow, you can continue to customize your respondent’s path through your survey by adding randomization, authenticators, web services, or new branch logic.

Survey Options

Survey Options presents a list of general settings that affect your respondents’ survey experience. These settings include a command to add a back button to your survey, display a custom end of survey message, include question numbers for respondents to see, and more.

You can also set Survey Protection settings. For example, you can stop respondents from taking a survey more than once with the Prevent Ballot Box Stuffing option and set date and time ranges for Survey Expiration. You can customize the Survey Experience too, such as changing a survey’s language settings.

Qtip: You can also navigate to the Survey Termination Survey Options by clicking the blue End of Survey element at the bottom of the survey editor. This allows you to edit what messages people see, what websites they redirect to, and more when the survey has ended.

Tools

The Tools dropdown menu contains a variety of advanced survey features. These features include options like Auto-Number Questions, Email Triggers, Quotas, Translations, Scoring, and more.

Tools also contains specific survey building aids, like stripping formatting, generating sample test responses for testing your surveys and exporting your survey to other formats.

Collaborate

The Collaborate button lets you adjust settings for all of the people who are working alongside you on a project. If you are the owner of a survey, you can limit the options given to your collaborators.

For example, you may want team members to help build your survey but do not want to give them permission to Distribute or to Deactivate it.

Preview Survey

The Toolbars’ Preview Survey feature lets you view and experience your survey just as your respondents will. This preview provides both computer screen and mobile device preview options.

Previewing is essential. Think of the Preview option as a debugging tool that helps you find all the potential mistakes, logic errors, and readability issues you may have missed when you were creating your survey.

Search

The Search tool allows you to find Blocks quickly. Just enter a word, or even a part of a word, and the survey will be filtered accordingly.

In this example, we are searching for a block on Objectives & Key Results (i.e., OKRs). The survey has a dozen blocks, but only one related to OKRs, which was easily isolated with a simple search.

It can also search for questions by their text, question number (e.g., Q3 or Q17), and internal IDs.

Banner Notifications

Sometimes, banners will appear across the top of the survey editor to tell you something important. We cover some of the most common here.

Multiple Users Editing the Survey

If you have invited other users to collaborate on your survey, you want to make sure you aren’t making edits at the same time that could cancel each other out. For example, if you’re changing the wording of your survey’s introduction at the same time your colleague is, her edits might override yours.

The banner will read, “Multiple people are editing this survey and you might impact each other’s changes.” It will also tell you how many users are in the survey at the same time, and when you hover over Currently Editing, you can see their names.

The banner is updated as users enter or exit the survey. Entering the same survey from the same account in multiple tabs will not activate this banner.

File Size Warning

If your survey exceeds 10MB, you will get a warning in red at the top of the survey editor. It reads: “This survey file size is getting too large and could cause performance problems. Consider making changes to reduce its size.”

This warning will not prevent you from making more edits. It is meant to caution you against making a survey too large.

Web Accessibility Standards

If you see a red banner that warns, “This survey does not meet web accessibility standards,” see the Requiring Accessible Surveys support page.

Changes Won’t Be Live Until You Publish

If you see a yellow banner that states, “You are making edits to this survey. Changes won’t be live until you publish,” see the Publishing support page on how to push your edits live.

FAQs