Editing a Survey

From qualtrics

The “Edit Survey” page is where you can format your survey. You can either create new questions, or you can copy questions from the library or an existing survey.

Edit Survey Toolbar
Manage the colors and fonts of your survey, add survey protection, change survey termination, etc.

Contents 1 Editing Basics 1.1 Create a New Question 1.2 Edit a Question 1.3 Move a Question 1.4 Delete a Question 1.5 View a Question 1.6 Save Your Survey 2 Select a survey to edit 3 Copy questions 4 Create a new question 4.1 Default question type 5 Question type menu 5.1 Answers 6 Editing a question 6.1 Edit Question Text 6.2 Edit the content of the scale choices 6.3 Change the number of scale choices 7 Validation 8 Moving Questions 9 Deleting Questions 10 Page Breaks 11 Survey Blocks 11.1 Adding additional blocks 11.2 Block Options 12 Viewing questions 13 Saving questions

Editing Basics

To select a survey to edit, click on the Survey Name on the “My Surveys” page, click on the “Edit” icon in the tasks column next to the Survey Name, or click on the “Edit Survey” tab.

Create a New Question

The green and red buttons above and below the question add new questions either before or after the selected question. The default question type is Multiple Choice.

Edit a Question

Click on the question you would like to edit. A menu appears to the right of your question. To change the question type, click the green box in the menu to the right. To edit the text of the question, click on the text: it will be highlighted in yellow and a cursor will appear. For more advanced options, select the link to Rich Text Editor.

Move a Question

The up and down arrows on the left of the question move the question up or down. The Move Question option in the menu can also be used to move a selected question by clicking on any desired location.

Delete a Question

The button deletes the question and sends it to the trash bin. Questions in the trash are visible at the bottom of the screen until the trash is emptied. Restoring the question will return it to its original location.

View a Question

The View Question link in the right column will show the question in the exact format that it will appear to respondents. To view the entire survey as it will appear to respondents, select “Preview Survey” from the upper toolbar.

Save Your Survey

Qualtrics auto-saves all changes when selecting new questions, tabs, or other functions.

Select a survey to edit

To select a survey to edit, you can do one of the following:

• Click on the Survey Name (on the “My Surveys” page)
• Click on the “Edit” icon in the tasks column next to the Survey Name (on the “My Surveys” page)
• Click on the “Edit Survey” tab
  • This will either take you directly to the last survey you were working on, or
  • If you have not edited a survey yet in this login session, it will ask you to choose a survey to edit:

Copy questions

1. Click on “Copy Questions From” at the bottom of the page to select questions from an existing survey.
2. Select the library from which you want to take questions.
3. Select the survey from which you want to take questions.
4. Highlight the desired question or group of questions from the left-hand panel.
5. Add the questions to your survey (blue button at bottom of right panel).

Note: If at any time you wish to exit out of a pop-up window, simply click on an area outside of the window and the pop-up will disappear.

Create a new question

• The green buttons above and below the question add new questions either before or after the selected question.
• New questions are added immediately before or after others with no page break in between

Default question type

• The default question type is Multiple Choice.
• You can easily change your question type by clicking the green box to the right of your screen. This will give you a menu with the different question options that are available.

Question type menu

See Question Types for detailed information

• Different question categories are located on the right.
• As you move your cursor over the different question categories, sample questions appear in the “Example Area” to the left.
• If you click on “Show All Question Types”, it will list all the question types and formatting options. Again, as you move your cursor over the list of question types, examples appear in the “Example Area”.

Answers

Different question types have different answer options, depending on the type of display and the number of choices allowed. See detailed Question Types for answer options.

For example, for a multiple choice question (as shown), the options are the following:

• Single answer (one response allowed)
• Multiple answer (multiple responses allowed)
• Drop down list (one response allowed)
• Select box (one response allowed)
• Multiple select box (multiple responses allowed)

Editing a question

• The menu that appears to the right of your question is for editing the selected question.
• To select a question for editing, click on it – it should be highlighted in light blue.
• If you change the question type, the text and scale points will be retained.

Edit Question Text

To edit the text of the question, click on the text: it will be highlighted in yellow and a cursor will appear.

• For more advanced options, select the link to Rich Text Editor
• A toolbar will appear
  • {a} will enable text to be used from other questions, selected answers, typed-in responses, or embedded data linked to respondents in a panel. (See advanced options section for more information on Piping)
  • Graphics or a movie clip can be added
  • Special characters, tables, and web links can be added

Edit the content of the scale choices

To edit the content of the scale choices, you can do any of the following:

• Click on the text itself: it will be highlighted in yellow and a cursor will appear.
• Use the “Edit Multiple” function, which gives you a pop-up box where you can either type in the statements or copy/paste multiple statements and scale points from another source
• Editing bar: click on “Automatic Choices” use automatic statements and scale points that are commonly used in surveys

Change the number of scale choices

• Use the + and - signs to add or subtract the number of statements
• To delete a choice
  • Click on the text of the statement. Delete the text. The choice should disappear.
  • Click on the text of the statement. An arrow will appear to the right of the statement. Click on it and choose the red button next to "Remove Choice".

Validation

Responses can be required for individual questions. Respondents will get a warning if they try to skip it, and the survey will not advance until an answer is provided.

Moving Questions

• The up and down arrows on the left side of the question move the question up or down in the survey.
• The Move Question link can also be used to move a selected question by clicking on the desired location. A blue preview of the location will follow your mouse cursor until you click to place the question.

TIP: On the Edit Survey page, select a question and Shift+click another to select all questions in between.

NOTE: Questions can be moved from one survey block to another unless that question has skip logic or the carry forward feature associated with it. Any skip logic or carry forwards associated with a moved question may be invalidated by the move.

Deleting Questions

• The red button deletes the question and sends it to the trash bin.
• Questions in the trash will still be visible at the bottom of the screen unless the trash is emptied. Restoring the question will return it to its original location.
• Once the trash is emptied, questions are permanently removed

Page Breaks

• A page break can be added so that questions will appear on a new page and respondents won’t have to continually scroll down the survey.
• Page breaks are required for certain advanced features to work
  • A page break is needed immediately after a question that uses Skip Logic
  • A page break is needed between questions when items from one question are carried over to another question
  • A page break is needed between questions when the piping feature is used
  • Creating a page break between blocks is not necessary. It will be added automatically
  • The back button can be used to move to previous pages if that feature is activated

Survey Blocks

• All simple surveys will be contained in a default block.
• Complex surveys with multiple paths will require several blocks.
• Each block is automatically separated by page breaks.

Adding additional blocks

• Using the “Block Options” drop-down list at the top of the block
• Using “Add Block” at the bottom of the block

Block Options

For more detailed instructions, please see Advanced Block Options

• Block Language - change the language of system messages supported by Qualtrics. This is not the option for direct translation of surveys to foreign languages (please see the "translate" option in Advanced Survey Options for this feature).
• Question Randomization - randomize order of questions in the block
• Loop and Merge - Series of questions that are identical except for some wording can be presented using the Loop and Merge feature

Viewing questions

• The View Question link in the right column will show the question in the exact format that it will appear to respondents
• View entire blocks of survey by selecting “View Block” from the Block Options drop-down list
• To view the entire survey as it will appear to respondents, select the Preview Survey option from the upper toolbar
• To make previewing advanced surveys that use display or skip logic easier, always enable a back button within the survey using the Survey Options feature. With this enabled, you can move back and forth within the survey to try out each condition. Without the back button, you will have to enter and re-enter the survey to see each condition.
• Before previewing, you can also select the option to “Ignore Validation”. This will allow you to progress through the entire survey without selecting a choice.
• The preview survey feature will result in faux responses being recorded to the data file. They will be labeled and can be deleted.

Saving questions

• As you go through your survey building process, Qualtrics automatically saves your work. Each time you make a change, that change is saved once you select something else. There will be a small pop-up box at the top left corner of your browser that says, “Saved.” Please note that there are several problems to this system.
  • Because it automatically saves once you click out of the question, you cannot “undo” anything. When you make a change to a question, it is done.
  • Changes will not be saved if you stop working for a while and don’t click out of the question you are editing. Qualtrics times out after a certain period of inactivity!
  • We suggest that you make edits on a copy of your survey if you would like the option to revert back an original copy of the survey.
• Recently, the ‘Ctrl’ + S command was added by Qualtrics as a way to save work.