Adding questions to surveys

After you have created a survey, you will automatically be brought to the Edit page where you can complete various tasks, including adding questions, editing existing questions, removing questions, and adding branching.

For each new blank survey, the following areas are created:

Introduction

In the Introduction, you can explain the the goal of your survey and inform respondents what incentive they may receive after completing the questionnaire.

Introduction.

Note: Keep the introduction short and start with a simple multiple choice question. Experience has shown that this is the best way to make people start your survey.

Page 1

This is the first page of your new survey. Select Add question to begin.

Page 1.

Note: Short pages with a limited number of questions are more appealing to respondents. Spread your questions over multiple pages. For example, it is recommended that you have one page per question or per subject.

Thank-you page

You can use a thank-you page to show your respondents that they have reached the end of a survey. You can include a thank-you note for the time taken to fill out the survey.

Thank-you page.

Adding questions

To add a question to your survey, complete the following steps:

Select Add question.
Select a question type.
Write your question in the Description box. Use the task bar on top to customize the appearance of the text or to apply variables. Enter possible answers in Answer choices. Each separate text box is for one answer choice. Click Add new answer choice to add more answer choices.

Select an option from the Response Order dropdown. By default, the responses are shown in the exact same order as you enter them.

To change the type of question, select the arrow to the right of the question type in the top-left corner of the question details pane and select a new question type. Only the question types that this type of question can be changed into will appear. If you require a different question type, add a new question and delete or hide this one instead.

Note: Hiding a question is recommended for live surveys. If you delete a question from a live survey, you will permanently lose the answers already provided to the deleted question.

If you're copying multiple answer choices from a Word (or other type of) document, you can also paste them in bulk by clicking Add answer choices in bulk option.

Note: Add in bulk with scores: You can upload response options and row headers (matrix question) in bulk. You are also able to add the score for each response option. Separate the response option and the score with a tilde (~) :eg. response~score

To move an answer choice to a different position, select the answer choice and drag it to the desired position.

Hide answer choices from respondents by clicking the eye icon to the right of the answer field. Click the icon again to make the question choice visible. If your survey is live, moving and answer choices will not influence your reports.

To delete an answer choice from a survey, click the trash icon to the right of the answer field.
Important: If you delete an answer choice, you will permanently delete all answers to that specific choice. If your survey is live, it is recommended that you hide the answer choice instead of deleting it.

Select Add the choice "None of the above" to add an escape. A text field appears where you can change the wording if you want.

To add an image as an answer choice, see "Adding an image an answer choice" below.
Select the Settings tab. See Question data labels for details about the Data label field. Select the number of columns. By default, all answer choices are shown in one single column. If you have a long list of answer choices and want to split them up, select the number of columns here. Then select whether a response is required. If you select Yes, respondents will have to answer the question to progress through the survey. Click Save.
See Adding scoring to surveys, Prefilling survey questions, and Adding question display logic to surveys for details about the Score, Prefill, and Display logic tabs.

Complete the steps above to add additional questions to your survey.

Tip:

When you can suggest a number of responses or response ranges, use closed questions instead of open questions from the category Open text fields. Use the question type Drop down list to ask for respondents' ages. You can apply a filter to these responses afterwards.
Open questions are useful when asking the reason why a certain response was given. These open questions are best set to "not required" so that respondents still have the choice to answer or not. By default, open questions are marked "not required".

Switching languages

When you've added more than one language to the survey, you can edit the question immediately for all languages. The language you're currently editing in is listed in the top-right corner of the edit question screen. Select one of the other available languages to edit the question in that language.

Switch languages.

Adding an image as an answer choice

You can use images as answer choices or a combination of images and text. You can use images that are already uploaded into your media library or you can upload them while adding or editing the question. To do this, click in the text box for the answer choice and select Insert media.

Select your image from the media library or click Upload a file. To add text to this image, enter the text right after the image in the answer choice text box.

Note: For reporting purposes, it is recommended to put text next to an image. This text will be displayed in the report with charts and filters. If you don't want respondents to see this text, you can hide it by adding the following span to the source code:<span class="report-only">text</span>

Copying questions from an existing survey

To copy questions from another survey, complete the following steps:

Select Add question.
In the Add question pane, select the Copy tab.
Select the survey from which you want to copy questions from the Survey dropdown. Then select the questions you want to copy from the Questions dropdown.
Click Copy.

Editing and deleting questions

To edit a question, select on the arrow next to the question and select Edit. Edit a question.

The question panel opens with question options. Click Save when done making your edits. See Adding questions for details on available properties and fields.

Tip: When you want to correct a typing error, you don't need to click the edit icon to make changes. Click the text and enter your your changes. This is called

inline editing

To delete a question, select the arrow next to the question and select Delete. You must confirm your decision to delete before the question is actually deleted. Delete a question.

Warning: Deleting a question from a live survey will permanently delete all answers to this question as well. If you still require these answers, hide the question instead.

Survey fields and properties

The following are additional settings you can add to a question. Some of these settings are only available to a specific question type. See Adding scoring to surveys, Prefilling survey questions, and Adding question display logic to surveys for details about options on the Score, Prefill, and Display logic tabs.

Min. or Max selections required — For multi-select questions, you can indicate how many responses should be selected at least or at most. You can leave this blank. For required questions, at least one choice will always need to be filled out, regardless of whether you leave this field blank or not.
Input field width — For text field questions, you can decide how wide they are. If you leave this blank, they'll spread across the entire survey page.
Prompt – Alignment — For list of textboxes, this means that the answer choices filled out in the prompts box will either be shown to the left or right of the textbox.
Max characters — For multiline textboxes, the maximum number of characters that can be used in a multiline textbox is 2,000, which is set by default. Change this number if you wish to add a tighter limit.
Total value — For constant sum questions, this is the total value to which the the sum should add up.
Scale label type — For all rating scale questions, you can add a certain label to your scale or only use the text provided in the textboxes.
Min. or Max value — For slider questions, you can set how low and high the slider scale needs to go
Display type — For rank order scale questions, you can select buttons or drop-downs.
Randomize sub-question order — For all matrix questions, you can determine if the subquestions need to be shown in random order, alphabetical order, or in the order in which you put them.
Validation — For all open text questions, you can set what type of text should be added in a text field. For example, this can be an email address, an integer, a decimal number, or a max number of characters.