How to Create a Survey - a step-by-step guide

• Getting Started
• Survey Details
• Survey Questions
• Optional/Skippable survey questions
• Schedule
• Participants (Optional)
• Summary
• Settings
• General
• Language
• Participation Groups
• Survey Question Branching
• Contact information
• Privacy
• Preview Mode

 

ThoughtExchange has all the tools you need to build a great survey and dig into your results. In this article we will walk you through everything you need to know from the first time you log in until the moment you hit Launch and invite you first crop of participants to share their feedback.

Survey Creation Stepper

Depending on the settings for your account, there are either four or five steps to creating a survey (the Participants step is only active if your account has a list of contacts uploaded or you are using our Slack or MS Teams Integrations). The four steps you will always see are:

Survey Questions

The 'Survey questions' step is where you will create the questions your participants will answer. Depending on your account settings, there are seven question types to choose from, each with a different participant experience. Click here to learn more about each question type and when they are best used.

Depending on your account settings, this is also where you will create survey topics if you wish to group survey questions under a header and description.  You can create the topics by clicking ‘Add survey topic’, then adding a survey topic, which requires a title (and an optional description). When you create or edit your survey questions, you can add them to a particular topic by selecting the appropriate one from the dropdown selector titled ‘Assign topic’.

 

To create a new survey question you can click the “Add survey questions” drop down menu (where you will select the question type) or click the “Select template” option if you want to use a templated question saved on your account. Click here to learn more about Survey Question templates (these are a huge time-saver if you find yourself using the same questions again and again in your surveys).

Your account settings determine the maximum number of questions you can ask. Each question can include up to 100 response options. 

Once you have chosen a question type you can enter your question on the line labeled “Your question goes here.”

• Questions can contain up to 400 characters.
• Response options are entered in the boxes below the question.
• To add a new option click the plus sign to the right of the text box.
• To remove an option click the minus sign.
• To re-order your options click and drag on the icon that looks like six dots to the left of the text box.
• Response options can include up to 200 characters.
• To delete a question click the Remove button on the bottom right corner of the question box.
• You can also include an “Other (please specify)” option by clicking the “+ ‘Other’ answer” button.

Some question types support a “Bulk answers” option where you can copy and paste lists of responses into a text box. Each line of the text box will appear as a different response option. This is handy if your question has a lot of possible answers (ex. What state do you live in?).

Note: The functionality described above may vary by question type. Review this article on question types to learn more.

Optional/Skippable survey questions

You can choose if survey questions are optional or mandatory for participants to complete. Each survey question comes with an ‘Answer required’ toggle. You can use this to make survey questions optional during participation.

When the ‘Answer required’ toggle is OFF for a survey question, it will appear as (optional) for participants. 

 

Conversely, when the ‘Answer required’ toggle is ON for a survey question, it will be displayed with an asterisk: 

If you begin working on a different question, your previous questions will convert to a read-only format. To edit any question displayed in this way, click the pencil icon to the left of the question number. You can expand or contract these static questions using the arrow icon in the top right corner of the question box, or you can expand all questions using the “Expand all” option above and to the right of the first question. To re-order your questions click and drag on the icon that looks like six dots to the left of the question number.

Note: If you have branching enabled, you must go to the Settings > Survey question branching section to re-order survey questions.

Once you have finished entering your survey questions, click Save & Next to move on to the next step. You may also save your work as a draft and exit to the main Engagements view. Your work will also save if you enter Preview mode (explained below).

Note: Once you save a survey question, if you decide to change its question type you will be limited to other types that support the answers you've provided (ex. A single select question can be turned into a multiple select or dropdown style question, but not a satisfaction score question). This can be done by clicking on the drop down menu with the current question type located to the right of the main question text.

Schedule

The Schedule step is where you can program dates and times for your survey to automatically open and close for participation. Use the ON/OFF toggles on the right-hand side of the screen to activate or deactivate the options.

Use the Select date and Select time fields to choose when your survey will open/close. All times reflect the timezone of the person creating the survey.

Once you have finished setting up your launch and deadline dates, click Save & Next to move on to the next step. You may also save your work as a draft and exit to the main Engagements view. Your work will also save if you enter Preview mode (explained below).

Participants (Optional)

Depending on your account settings, you may see a ‘Participants’ step next. This is where you can choose between using individualized links, code-authenticated access when you need to restrict access to your engagements, or set up automatic invitations that can be sent to potential respondents via MS Teams or Slack. 

 

If your account uses the Contact Upload feature, you will see the options for individualized links sent via email invitations or code access based on criteria your administrator has defined in an existing contact list. 

 

Email: when activated, only these links can be used to access a particular engagement. This ensures that participants cannot participate more than once (and will not be counted more than once if they switch devices), and provides a measure of control for leaders regarding who is participating. It also makes it easier for participants to pick up where they left off if participating across multiple sessions. 

 

These links do not completely prevent participants from sharing access to an engagement with individuals who are not on a predetermined list of participants, but it means that people using the same link can only participate in the engagement once between them.

 

Code access: when activated, you will send a single URL to all invitees and each potential participant must enter a predetermined code (such as their employee number or student ID) in order to gain access to the engagement.  

 

If your account uses either of the Microsoft Teams or Slack integrations, you will see options to send invitations to the channels you have configured.

 

 

Enabling the email, Slack, or MS Teams options will activate a text box where you can customize the invitation message.

Once you have finished setting up your automatic invitations, click Save & Next to move on to the next step. You may also save your work as a draft and exit to the main Engagements view. Your work will also save if you enter Preview mode (explained below).

If using code access, you must open the Invite option for your engagement and copy the invitation URL to send to your invitees (invitations are not automatically sent for code access).

Summary

The Summary step is a breeze. This is where you can review all the work you’ve done on your survey before clicking the “Launch” button. Click any of the steps indicated at the top of the screen to move back and make changes. It’s also a good idea to open up Preview mode to see things from a participant’s point of view at this stage. Once you are happy with how things look, click “Launch” to activate the invitation link for your survey. You may also save your work as a draft and exit to the main Engagements view.

Note: if you have survey question branching enabled, the branching logic you have applied to your questions is not reflected in the summary step. Utilizing Preview to review your work is recommended. 

 

Settings

The Settings menu is indicated by the icon that looks like a gear in the top right corner of the survey creation workflow.

The Settings menu provides many options to customize your survey across six tabs (General, Language, Participation groups, Survey question branching, Contact information, and Privacy).

Language

The Language tab is where you can provide access to your survey in multiple languages. ThoughtExchange supports custom translation of your survey questions in English, French, and Spanish. 

 

 

If you enable any of these language options a new step called “Translations” will appear in your survey creation workflow where you can input translated text for each element of your survey.

 

 

By default, the option “Offer additional participation languages with Google Translate” is ON. This provides participants with a drop down menu to select a language of their choice at the beginning of the survey. Google Translate does all the work here, so you don’t need to enter any translations, but the ones that appear may not be 100% accurate. If you would like to diable this option, which the toggle on the right hand side of the screen to OFF.

 

When you are finished in this tab, click “Apply” at the bottom of the screen to save your changes.

Participation Groups

The Participation groups tab allows you to create a single question that is used to split your participants into separate surveys. This allows you to easily view and report on the data from each group separately when your survey is complete, but you can also recombine the groups to see overall statistics when working in the Results Dashboard. 

When you are finished in this tab, click “Apply” at the bottom of the screen to save your changes.

Survey Question Branching

The Survey question branching tab is where you can apply custom logic to your survey questions to create different paths for participants based on their responses. This is a great tool if certain responses have unique follow-up questions that you would like to ask or if the survey of your dreams is a little more complicated than the norm. 

This tool gives leaders an enormous amount of control over what their participants experience, so we’ve created a separate article to cover the various options. 

Click here to learn more about survey branching.

Contact information

When you want to request that participants share their contact info with you, this is where you can configure that request. 

Toggle the feature to ON, and enter a message that will be seen by participants. Participants will be informed on the Welcome screen that the survey will ask them to optionally provide contact information when they have reached the end.

All entered information is stored securely in a .csv file, which you can download on the Reports tab of the Results Dashboard for the survey.

Privacy

Privacy is where you can choose to require your participants to log in to their ThoughtExchange account with an email address and password to participate in your survey (this allows them to more reliably pick up where they left off if they don’t complete your survey in a single session). Click here to learn more about requiring login.

Depending on your setting, this is also where you will set your engagement privacy settings. You can choose between ‘classic’, ‘anonymous’, and ‘confidential’. Anonymous privacy settings allow access to participant response downloads that don’t include personal identifying information.  Confidential privacy settings access to participant response downloads that do include personal identifying information (ex. Email address, unique participant ID, etc.) when such information was used to access the engagement.  

 

The default privacy setting, ‘classic’, is where participants’ responses are not linked to any identifying information.  Learn more about engagement privacy settings here.

Preview Mode

Preview mode allows leaders to take a tour of exactly what their participants will see in a way that will not save any test responses. Enjoy the confidence of knowing that your survey is laid out how you want it without worrying about altering your participation statistics.