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Creating Questions

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About Creating Questions

Once you’ve created your survey, you’re ready to start building. This page outlines how to add, delete, copy, and edit multiple questions at once in the Survey tab.

Adding New Questions

  1. Click Add new question.
    Blue add question button in lower-right of builder, inside a block

    Qtip: Questions are numbered in the order they are created, not the order they appear in the survey. You can renumber your questions using the Auto-Number Questions feature.
  2. Select your desired question type from the drop-down menu that appears.
    Menu expands from button showing a list of question types
  3. Click on any text to begin editing your question or choices.
    Answer choice selected, dropdown next to it

To add another question, you can hover over an existing question and click the blue plus (+) buttons (either above or below the existing question), or you can select Add new question again.

Blue plus signs to left of a question, above and below, based on wehre you want to add the new question

Warning: Be careful to finish all your editing before you distribute your survey! Changing a question’s type after you’ve started collecting data may invalidate previous responses to that question.
Attention: The Edit Multiple feature is disabled as soon as you collect data on your survey. This is to prevent invalidation of your data. If you copy a survey where this feature has been disabled, the copy will also not contain the Edit Multiple feature.

Deleting Questions

If you no longer need a question, it can be deleted. A deleted question will be stored in your Trash at the bottom of the Survey tab until it is permanently deleted.

Warning: If your survey has collected responses, deleting a question will remove all of the data associated with that question. View our pages on Testing and Editing an Active Survey and Saving and Restoring for more information.
  1. Move your mouse over the question.
  2. Click the red minus sign ( – ) that appears to the left.
    Red minus sign appears on left of question

Undeleting a question

  1. Click the drop-down arrow to expand the Trash and see the questions inside it.
    Downward arrow, upper-left of trashcan
  2. Select the question you want to undelete.
  3. Click Restore in the edit question pane.
    Restore appears to left

Permanently deleting a question

If you would like to permanently remove a question from your trash, select the question and then click Permanently Delete. To finalize the deletion, refresh your account. To permanently delete all questions from your trash at once, select Empty trash.

Both deletion buttons highlighted

Editing Multiple Questions

Once you’ve selected multiple questions in your survey, a new menu will appear allowing you to delete, copy, and move these questions in addition to other options.

You have 3 ways to select multiple questions:

  • Select the checkboxes next to the questions you want to group.
    Checkboxes in upper-left of questions are selected
  • Hold Ctrl and click the questions you want to group.
  • Click the first question you want to select, hold Shift, and then click the last question you want to select. This will select both the questions you clicked and all the questions in between.

Once you’ve selected multiple questions, a list of group actions will appear to the left of the questions.

As when selecting a single question, a menu opens to the left with options of what you can do to all of the ones selected at once

Group Actions

  • Delete questions: Delete selected questions. Deleted questions will be stored in your Trash until permanently deleted.
  • Copy questions: Copy all selected questions. Copied questions are placed below the currently selected questions.
  • Move questions: Move selected questions into an existing block within the survey.
  • Create new block: Move selected questions into a newly created block placed at the end of the survey.
  • Response requirements: If you select Add requirements, you will be able to force or request a response on all selected questions. See Response Requirements & Validation for more details.
    Response requirements, includes force response and request response

Copying Questions

If a question you want to use already exists in your current survey or another survey, you can save time by copying that question to your survey rather than re-creating it. You can also copy pre-built questions from the Qualtrics Library.

Copying a question from your current survey

  1. Select the question.
  2. Click the dots in the upper-right of the question.
    Dots expanded, copy selected
  3. Select Copy.

Copying a question from a previous survey

  1. Click Import from library.
    Import questions button, right next to create new question button at bottom of blocks in the builder
  2. Select Copy from existing project.
    Survey library menu open to the right, "copy from an existing project" is the very last option

    Qtip: You can also add questions from your library, use prebuilt Qualtrics content such as certified questions, or use the search bar to find what you need.
  3. Select the survey you want to copy the question(s) from.
    Image of surveys on the menu
  4. Use the checkboxes to select the question(s) you want to copy.
    Selected questions, insert button at bottom
  5. Click Insert question(s).
Qtip: If you click the question itself instead of the checkbox, you can view more information about the question. You will also have the option to insert the selected question into your survey.
Qtip: Questions won’t have new numbers assigned to them, but will have preassigned numbers. If the question is Q35 in the original survey, it will be Q35 when you import it, regardless of how many questions are already in your survey. You can always renumber your questions.

Copying a question from the Qualtrics Library

The Qualtrics library comes equipped with all kinds of helpful, prebuilt content. To learn more about adding questions from the Qualtrics Library and the available questions, see Pre-Made Qualtrics Library Questions.

Moving Questions

As you build your survey, you may find you need to change the order of your questions. Thankfully, moving questions around is easy, and can be done one-by-one, or with multiple questions selected at once. All of these methods allow you to move questions across blocks.

Moving A Single Question

This option allows you to move a question up or down 1 space at a time.

  1. Click on the question you’d like to move, which will be outlined in blue.
    Moving a question

    Qtip: You can select multiple questions at once by holding the Shift key on your keyboard when clicking on your questions.
  2. Hover your mouse around the border of the question or block until it makes a 4-way arrow.
  3. Click the left mouse button.
  4. Drag your mouse to where you want to move the question or block in your survey. A blue line will appear showing where the question is being moved.
    Moving questions
  5. Release the left mouse button.

Example: The GIF below demonstrates how to drag and drop a question in the survey builder.

Gif of questions moving

You can also move your questions to a specific part of the survey by clicking the dots in the upper-right of the question, selecting Move question, and selecting a new position in the survey.

moving questions to a new place in the survey

Moving Multiple Questions

This option lets you move multiple questions at once. You can move questions as far across the survey as you need.

  1. Select the questions you’d like to move. Once selected, they will have a blue checkmark in the top left corner and be outlined in blue.
    Selecting multiple questions

    Qtip: You can select multiple questions at once by holding the Shift key on your keyboard when clicking on your questions.
  2. Hover your mouse around the border of 1 of the questions until it makes a 4-way arrow.
    Selecting multiple questions
  3. Click the left mouse button.
  4. Drag your mouse to where you want to move the questions. A blue line will appear showing where the questions are being moved.
    Moving Questions
  5. Release the left mouse button.
Example: The GIF below demonstrates how to drag and drop multiple questions in the survey builder.
Gif showing how to move multiple questions as described in the steps above
Qtip: If you’d like to move your selected questions together into a new block, you may want to use the Move to a New Block option.

Creating Questions in Different Project Types

This support page describes how to create, delete, and move questions in just about every type of project where you customize a survey. This includes:

Qtip: For details on customizing MaxDiff and Conjoint surveys, see this page.
Attention: Although question editing is similar, not every type of project has the same type of questions. See our table showing question types by project.

FAQs

See the Library Surveys page for more detailed information.
There are 3 main uses for surveys in your Library:
For more details, see Inline Email Questions.
Question numbers can be manually edited one-by-oneby clicking on the number in the survey editor and typing a new value. Alternatively, you can renumber all your questions at once using the Auto-Number Questions feature.

Note that renumbering will not harm your data, and you can renumber questions at any time.
It depends how complex your survey is. See the Building a Consent Form support page for detailed instructions for 2 different versions of a consent form.
There are multiple methods for exporting your survey, depending on the file type and information you want to have in your export. All options are located toward the bottom of your Tools menu.
  • Export Survey: Export a QSF of your survey that contains all formatting and settings but not any response data. This option is usually used to create copies of your survey for storage or sharing. Unlike the other 2 formats covered here, a QSF can be imported back into Qualtrics.
  • Export Survey to Word: Export a DOCX of your survey that contains all of the questions, logic, and coded values, but not the stylistic formatting.
  • Print Survey: Print a physical copy of your survey or save a PDF.
The Edit Multiple button disappears when a survey collects at least 1 response. This is a protective measure, since deleting answer options may corrupt your collected data and the Edit Multiple feature makes it very easy to delete answer options. If you copy a project where this has happened, the survey copy will also have Edit Multiple disabled.

Pausing response collection will not bring Edit Multiple back. However, if you import the survey questions into a new project via the Import Questions From button, the Edit Multiple button will return.
The Translate Survey feature allows you to add multiple languages to a single survey. Using contact lists, you have the ability to set the language each respondent will see the survey appear in. Because there is just 1 survey containing all of the translations, all of the results will appear in the same data set.
Once you’ve collected data, we recommend never deleting a question or answer choice, as it could invalidate your data. Instead, you can use Display Logic to hide your question or answer choice so that respondents will not see it. See Hiding Questions with Display Logic for more information.