This article tells you how to:
Create questions for your questionnaire
Add a participant identifier
Add Net Promoter Score
Add Matrix questions
Add ranking questions
Add Likert questions
Reorder questions
Write effective questions for your study
How to set up a participant identifier
If you want to identify your participants in your results, you can select 'Email address' or 'Other' in the questionnaire tab. If you select 'Other', write the type of identifier in the text field.
Be aware that your participants will have to enter this information, or they won't be able to complete the study. If you think this will put participants off, consider selecting 'Anonymous'.
Here's an example of what you'll see in the questionnaire tab if you want to identify your participants by their Student ID Number:
This is how your participants will see your request on their welcome page:
How to create questions for your questionnaire
In the Questionnaire tab, you can write a message that will be displayed to your participants. This sits just above your questions. You can write a short message into the 'Message' text field to introduce the questions, or use the default text. To create a new question, click 'Add question'.
If your participants must answer the question, then click the checkbox 'Required'.
Write your question into the text box, and use the drop down menu underneath to select the type of answer you want from your participants. You have five options for the type of answers you want from your participants.
You can also drag and drop your questions to change up the order of your questionnaire. Simply click and hold the three dots in the top left hand corner of each question to drag and rearrange.
Add logic to your questions
Logic, also known as skip logic or branching logic, is a feature that allows you to create a more tailored and relevant study for your participants. By using logic, your participants can skip questions based on the answers they gave to previous questions.
As an example, let's say you're running a survey of people who are looking to buy a house. You can add logic to only show certain questions to your participants. If your first question is "How long have you been looking to buy a house", then any participants who select 'Over 1 year' as their answer to question 1 will be automatically skipped ahead to question 3.
You can also use logic to branch your study. For example, if you had a study that contained 10 questions about the process of buying a home and you wanted to dive a bit deeper into what was taking some people so long to find a house, you could add logic so that some participants skip ahead from question 2 to question 5, then all participants answer questions 8 onwards.
Note: If you add logic to your study, you won’t be able to randomize your study questions.
How to add multiple choice options, and what they look like to participants
If you select any of the multiple choice options, click 'Add option', and write your answer options into the text fields.
'Radio' and 'checkbox' selection options allow you to include an optional free text response via the 'Add 'Other' option' link. This can be useful if you wish participants to be able to provide responses that you hadn't considered in your multi choice options.
You can also add, edit and copy/paste multiple choice options by clicking the 'Bulk edit' button and using the text field presented. Each line in the editor represents a separate multiple choice answer.
Here's an example question and example answers:
Here's how the three different multiple choice options will appear to participants:
Multiple choice, single answer, radio select with 'other' option enabled
Multiple choice, single answer, drop down select
Multiple choice, multiple answer, checkbox select with 'other' option enabled
How to add Net Promoter Score® to questions and what they look like to participants
You can use the Net Promoter Score to find out how likely your participants will recommend your products and services.
The question should be asked in the format of "How likely is it that you would recommend our company / product / service to a friend or colleague."
How your Net Promoter Scale question will appear to your participants
How to add Likert item questions and what they look like to participants
You can use Likert item questions to discover the extent to which participants agree with a statement.
These questions consist of:
The statement that you wish to understand your participants' feelings towards
A scaled set of possible responses for your participants to choose from
Defining your statement
Input your desired statement into the question dialog box
e.g. “Using the scale below please indicate how satisfied you are with the service provided.”
Defining your scale
We offer a choice of either a 5 or 7 point scale depending on how granular you’d like your participants' responses to be.
To define the scale, simply type the range of responses you wish to present to you participants into the dialog boxes.
You can also add, edit and copy/paste responses by clicking the 'Bulk edit' button and using the text field presented. Each line in the editor represents a separate response.
How your Likert scale question will appear to your participants
How to add matrix questions to your survey
Matrix questions, also known matrix tables, are similar to a Likert scale but give you more flexibility for your questions.
They allow your participants to evaluate multiple individual items in rows against a set of columns. These can be very useful if you need your respondents to rate a certain number of items with the same criteria, for example, their level of satisfaction with different types of services.
To set up your matrix question, select the matrix option in the question type dropdown.
You can add up to 10 column labels that sit along the top of your table, and as many row labels as you need. For best practice, we recommend keeping your columns and rows to a maximum of 6 each to make your question easy to read and understand.
If you’ve marked your matrix question as ‘Optional’ your participants won’t need to complete each row and can progress to the next question or end your study.
How your matrix question will appear to your participants
Reordering Questions
Question order can be changed by selecting their sequence number, found at the top left of each question, then dragging them into your desired order.
How to add ranking questions to your study
When you use a ranking question you can ask your participants to rank certain objects against each other in a list. This helps you find out the preferred or most important choice according to each participant.
To set up your ranking question, select the ranking option in the question type drop down.
Add some brief instructions then enter in the options you’d like your participants to rank. You can choose to randomize the order in which these options are displayed or keep them in a set order.
How your ranking question will appear to your participants
Your participants can drag and drop each option in the list into different positions.
Reordering Questions
Question order can be changed by selecting their sequence number, found at the top left of each question, then dragging them into your desired order.
Write effective questions for your study
The way your questions are written can affect the quality of the responses you receive, so it pays to spend a lot of time fine tuning them when you design your study. Before you begin, think about the types of questions in your study, the tone and wording, the kind of responses you provide participants, and the order in which your questions are listed.
Here are some tips to help you get started with your Questions study.
Pick the right questions for your research
The types of questions you use for your study will largely depend on your research goals. Are you looking for feedback and opinions to improve a product or service? Or perhaps you’re after more stat-heavy data to find out more about your participants.
Open ended questions are great for gaining an insight into what your participants think and feel about certain topics. Example, “What do you think we could do to improve your experience with our support team?”
On the other hand, closed questions are useful for collecting information for things like demographics and other data.
Example: “Which type of device do you prefer to browse the internet with?”
Desktop computer
Laptop
Smartphone
Tablet
Make your questions easy to understand
To capture quality responses from your participants, you need to make sure they know what you’re asking them. Keep your questions simple — try not to pack more than one action into a single question or else it can become too complex. For example, the following question is too packed: “How useful do you find our FAQ page and product landing pages?”. These are two different areas of the site and your participants might have different thoughts on each section, making it hard for them to answer. Instead of stuffing these two actions into one single question, it’s better to split them into two separate questions.
Try to keep your questions free of jargon to prevent any confusion. If you absolutely have to use some jargony terms, try to include a small explanation of what they mean. While some of your participants might know what the word means, there’s a chance that some other participants or people reviewing your results may not.
Keep your questions balanced
As previously mentioned, the way your questions are crafted has a huge impact on the results you receive. This means your questions can’t lead your participants to a certain answer or you’ll end up with biased data.
The following is an example of a leading question:
“The majority of people in New Zealand buy their groceries online. Do you also buy your groceries online?”
This is a leading question because it states that most people in New Zealand buy their groceries online, which hints that it’s the ‘correct’ answer. Instead, this question could simply be cut down to “Do you buy your groceries online?”
The same applies for loaded words (words that invoke strong feelings, whether positive or negative). For example, “We think our customer success team is really awesome. How awesome do you think they are?”.
Provide the right kinds of options
If you’re providing questions with dropdown, radio button or checkbox responses, you’ll also need to give your participants options to select from too. To get quality data, make sure your responses are clear and don’t overlap one another.
Take the following question as an example:
If a participant had 5 members in their team, they’d be quite confused as to which option to select, and in the end it might skew your data.
Designing your survey
Think about the order
The way in which your questions are ordered can affect your results. In fact, you can even bias your results due to the order of your questions. Participants can be primed into thinking about an answer to a previous question while they’re answering another question.
For example, “What are some of the deadliest food allergies you know of?” then the following question could be “Do you believe peanuts and peanut products should be banned from all schools?”. The first question makes participants think of some of the deadliest food allergies they know (hopefully bringing peanuts to mind), while the second question reminds them of the potentially deadly association peanuts can have.
At the same time, it makes sense to order your questions in a particular way with a logical flow so that your participants can follow them easily. This is handy if you’re researching a particular process or something else that has a chronological order to it. For example, you could be researching the online shopping experience on your website:
How often do you visit our site?
Did you find what you were looking for on our site?
If you did not find what you wanted, can you describe what you were looking for?
Describe your experience with the checkout process.
Did you receive the item you ordered? Etc.
Within the tool, you can opt to randomize the order of your questions on the Questionnaire tab. Additionally, you can also drag and drop your questions to change up the order.