Survey Tab Basic Overview

About the Survey Builder

When you open a project or click the Survey tab, you’ll find yourself on the Survey Builder. Here, you’ll create questions, determine their flow, and configure other settings that will impact how respondents see your survey.

To get comfortable with the survey builder, let’s go over some of the most important tools you’ll find here:

1. Here’s a block where questions can be grouped together.
2. This is an individual question.
3. Once the question is clicked,  the question’s editing pane opens on the left. (Blocks also have an editing pane!)
4. To leave the survey builder and explore more survey configuration, choose an option from the toolbar. This is where you’ll find:
   • Survey Builder (where you currently are)
   • Survey Flow
   • Look and feel
   • Survey Options
   • Quotas
   • Translations
5. Click Preview to test your survey.
6. When you’re finished editing, publish your survey changes live.

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.”

When you edit a block, here are some key options available to you:

1. Block name: Change at any time by clicking directly on the name and typing a new one.
2. Block editing pane: Appears when you click the block (e.g., white space next to the name) without clicking a question. Make changes to block behavior and formatting. Includes question randomization, loop & merge, and the ability to edit Next / Previous button text.
3. Block options menu: Displays an list of one-click block editing choices. See the linked page for more information about each option.
4. Add Block: Lets you create new blocks.

Blocks are best understood with a few examples:

• Many surveys start with an initial “Demographics” block that asks respondents about themselves. You can even use certified demographic questions from our library.
• Additionally, you could channel the various demographics down different survey pathways (i.e., one path for parents and another for those without children) with branch logic. Splitting questions into different blocks based on the audience isn’t just organized; it will help you set up your survey flow later.
• You could also start a study with a dedicated consent block. Use these questions to determine if the respondent wants to participate in your study, and from there, redirect them accordingly.

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 lets you divide your survey into different paths with the survey flow. To learn more about how your blocks fit into a larger survey flow, see Question Blocks.

Question and 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 Add new question.
   
2. You can also add questions by hovering over a question and clicking one of the plus signs ( + ). This adds the new question either above or below the existing question.
3. Click the 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 around the survey by clicking and dragging them. The question you move will be highlighted in blue, and where it lands is represented by a blue line in the editor.
   
   Qtip: Be careful not to click on the question text or answer choice text, or you’ll end up editing the wording of the question instead of moving the question.

Editing Questions

Click directly on a question’s text or answer choices to begin editing them. To change the text, simply type the text into the text box that appears.

Questions don’t just consist of plain text. You can insert all kinds of important information and formatting into a question. Below, we’ve highlighted some of the most important and commonly used features available to you when you edit questions.

• Rich Content Editor: Apply formatting, such as bolding, italics, adding hyperlinks, etc.
  
• Piped Text: Piped text works as a placeholder, and allows you to dynamically pull text from a previous question, contact list information, or embedded data, and display it in the current question.
  
• Formatting Answer Choices: Answers come with a whole host of unique editing tools. For example, you can add “Other” text to a multiple choice; hide certain choices; or even add graphics.
  
• Response requirements: Require your audience to respond to certain questions, or respond in a certain format.
  
• Question behavior: Add advanced behavior to your questions, such as the ability to hide questions under certain conditions, take selected choices from a previous survey question, designate a choice to be selected by default, and more. For example, some of the most commonly used question behaviors include:
  
  • Display logic: Show (or hide) your question conditionally based on previous information.
  • Skip logic: Send respondents to a future point in the survey based on how they answer the selected question.
  • Carry forward choices: Copy specific answer choices from one question and bring them into a future question in your survey.
  • Recode values: Use this option to change the default numeric values or variable names for your answer choices. The coding you set here will be reflected in your reports and raw data, and is used to calculate all statistics.

For more general information on creating and editing questions, see Creating Questions and Formatting Questions.

Question Types

When you first create a 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, NPS). For example, here’s a matrix table.

As the question type changes, different editing options become available. Let’s look at an example of unique settings you’d see in the editing pane for this matrix table:

1. Matrix Type: In this case, choose whether the matrix is formatted as a series of Likert scales, as a bipolar table, or more.
   
2. Statements: Use the + or – buttons to increase or decrease the number of possible statements.
3. Scale Points: Use the + or – buttons to increase or decrease the number of possible scale points.

If you have questions about a type of question you’re using, be sure to check out its support page. You can find a list of all question types and their pages on Question Types.

Tools

The Tools dropdown menu contains a variety of advanced survey features. These features include options like auto-number questions, managing reusable choices, and more.

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

Search

The search tool in the survey builder allows you to find questions and blocks quickly. Just enter a word, or even a part of a word, and the survey will be filtered accordingly. Click the search button, then type in the field that appears.

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

Survey Toolbar and Navigation Basics

The toolbar along the left manages your survey’s design options, security settings, and logic structures (i.e., survey flow). The toolbar along the top also lets you preview, publish, and search your survey.

Survey Flow

The Survey flow section gives 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.

Look and 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 andFeel 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 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, quotas, translations, scoring, and more.

You can also set security settings for your survey. For example, you can stop respondents from taking a survey more than once, or add password protection to the survey. You can customize general settings too, such as changing a survey’s language.

Qtip: In addition to the Post-Survey options provided, you can edit the message that displays at the end of your survey by clicking the End of Survey element at the bottom of the survey builder. This allows you to edit what messages people see, what websites they redirect to, and more when the survey has ended.

Preview Survey

The preview 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.

Banner Notifications

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

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.

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 builder. 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.

FAQs