Overview: Survey structure
About the structure of a survey
Every survey has four parts: a welcome screen, one or more question groups, the questions in each group and an end screen. Participants go through them in that order, by default one group per page. The Structure panel on the left lists the parts as a tree; the editorial area in the middle shows them the way participants see them, and you edit them there in place.
1. The Structure panel
Your whole survey in one list. Open and close it with the list icon at the top of the left toolbar. Click an item to jump to it in the editorial area; a group, a question or End also opens its settings on the right. The arrow in front of a group folds its questions in and out.
2. Welcome screen
The first thing participants see. The survey title, a welcome description and a welcome message, then the number of questions and the Start survey button. Click a text in the editorial area to change it. See Welcome screen and end screen.
3. Question groups
One group, one page. With the default page setting participants get one group per page, so groups are also how you split the survey into pages. The group header shows the title and the number of questions; the eye icon previews the group and the ... menu duplicates or deletes it. Click the group in the Structure panel to open Group settings: Title, Description, Randomization group and Condition. Groups with the same randomization group name appear in random order; the condition decides who sees the group (1 means everyone). See Add and edit a question group.
4. Questions
The questions of a group, in the order participants get them. Click a question to edit it in place and to open its question settings on the right. The up and down arrows next to a selected question move it; the icons at its bottom right preview, duplicate or delete it. In the Structure panel, the ... menu next to a question has Check logic, Duplicate question and Delete question. To see every question code in the Structure panel, turn on Question codes under View in the ... menu at the top right of the editor. See Add and edit a question, Question settings, Reorder, preview, copy and delete questions and Question and answer codes.
5. End screen
What participants see when they finish. The end screen comes after the last question: scroll down to the bottom of the editorial area, or click End in the Structure panel to jump there. Write the end message in place. End also opens End screen settings on the right: End url is a page of yours that participants can go to after the survey, and URL description is the link text for it. To send participants there straight away, turn on Automatically load end URL when the survey is complete in Presentation. See Welcome screen and end screen.
6. The purple plus
Where new groups and questions come from. The purple plus in the top bar opens the question type picker. Pick a type to add a question, or click Add question group on the left of the picker. The small plus under the last question of a group opens the same picker. The search field at the top finds a type by name.
Logic, text and reuse
The other articles of this section make the questions work together:
- Conditions: show a question only when it applies: show a question only to the participants it concerns.
- Validation: make sure the answers you get are usable: mandatory questions, limits and validation equations.
- Piping: use answers from previous questions: put an earlier answer into a later text.
- Format text in the survey editor: the text toolbar, font sizes and Edit as HTML.
- Reuse questions and groups: duplicate them, or build a new survey on them.
What else belongs to a survey
Besides groups and questions, a survey holds:
- the base language and any additional languages (Settings > General > Survey languages),
- the survey settings: general settings, privacy policy, participant settings, publication and access, notifications and data (gear icon),
- the theme and presentation options (paint bucket icon),
- the classic survey menu with participants, email templates, quotas, assessments, panel integration, resources and plugins (document icon),
- survey permissions for other users of your survey site (users icon).
Pages
How the survey is split into pages is a setting, not part of the structure. Open Settings > General and set Format to Group by group (default, one page per group), Question by question or All in one.