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.
Manage the colors and fonts of your survey, add survey protection, change survey termination, etc.
Contents |
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
- Click on “Copy Questions From” at the bottom of the page to select questions from an existing survey.
- Select the library from which you want to take questions.
- Select the survey from which you want to take questions.
- Highlight the desired question or group of questions from the left-hand panel.
- 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.
Survey Editor Toolbar
The Survey Editor Toolbar appears in the "Edit Survey" tab
Look & Feel
This button takes you to a page where you can change the way your survey looks to the user. On this page, you can do the following:
- Select a predesigned skin that contains colors and buttons in a wide variety of designs.
- Create a header and footer for your survey that is displayed on every page
- Change the background colors or fonts
- Change the look of the buttons
- Add a progress bar
- Change the number of questions per page
- Highlight or add question separators
To insert a graphic to appear on every page of your survey
- In the Edit Survey tab, select the Look and Feel rainbow icon at the top of the page.
- Locate the Header box, found in the upper left of this screen. Select the blue text: Edit.
- The second logo from the left allows you to insert a graphic. You can either insert an image from your library or upload a new image. Hit Save when you are finished.
Custom Skins
Qualtrics offers many different templates if you need one without the U of M or Brand logos. These templates can be viewed in the preview box to the left.
- Your individual brand may offer templates specific to the U of M or specific brand. To access these skins, click on the drop down menu on the top right of your screen.
Survey Options
This tool contains options for customizing the survey experience, survey protection, survey termination, response sets.
Survey Flow
This is for changing the flow of your survey when you are using multiple question blocks. This is only necessary when doing advanced surveys that require a special type of skip logic, branching, data processing, or block randomization.
Survey Flow can be accessed through the Survey Editor Toolbar of the "Edit Survey" tab
Branching
Embedded Data
End of Survey
Block Randomization
Block randomization is programmed using the Survey Flow tool.
- In Survey Flow, click "Add Below" and choose the "Randomizer".
- If your blocks already appear in the Survey Flow, click "Move" and drag them as elements in the randomizer.
- You can choose to display a subset of the blocks
- You can choose to evenly display the elements
Print Survey
This prints out the survey which can be helpful when proofing. However, the print preview and printout will not appear exactly as it does to respondents. Block names will appear, and all blocks/questions that many respondents will never see will also appear. spell check
Preview Survey
This gives you a look at what your survey will look like to the respondents. Please note that when you run through the entire survey in Preview mode, your test responses will be recorded in the results. Before collecting your real survey responses, you will want to delete the test responses. You can clear out test responses by selecting the “Results” icon and deleting the results reports.
Launch Survey
This will activate your survey or make it “live” and ready to send out to a group of people. It has to be live in order for Qualtrics to generate a link that you can send to your respondents. The green box with the check mark means that it is active.
