Tailor the wording of a survey question for specific projects
- Matt Kepple
You can tailor the wording of a survey question for specific projects.
There are two methods for creating different versions of a survey
Single Survey (Recommended and particularly useful for longitudinal research, e.g. pre & post)
Separate Surveys
The kind of questions used | SINGLE SURVEY | SEPARATE SURVEYS |
|---|---|---|
Core Questions using Waves | Yes | No |
Reusable Questions | No | Yes |
Bespoke Questions | No | Yes |
Dictionary
Core Question: a question that appears in a survey. You can have several versions of that one survey and can choose to hide or edit the appearance of each Core Question in each version. (Requires the survey to use Waves)
Reusable Question: a question that appears in several surveys. In each survey the question will appear exactly the same as it does in all the other surveys.
Bespoke Question: a question that appears in only one survey.
How to choose which method to use
We recommend the Core Questions using Waves method as it gives you the most analytical capabilities
| SINGLE SURVEY | SEPARATE SURVEYS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core Questions using Waves | Reusable Questions | Bespoke Questions |
Ability to view results from a single version of the survey | |||
Using survey analytics, outcome charts, progress panels and Progress Boards | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Ability to aggregate results from across the different versions of the survey | |||
Yes | Yes | No | |
Progress Panel | Yes | Yes | No |
Album-level verdicts (where different projects use different versions of the survey) | Yes | No | No |
Outcome Charts | Yes | No | No |
Ability to connect results from across the different versions of the survey (e.g. a pre and post survey) | |||
Distance Travelled | Yes | Yes | No |
Distribution over Time | Yes | Yes | No |
A key factor to determine which approach is best for you is: do you want to be able to aggregate results and connect results from across the different versions of the survey, in spite of the differences in questions across each version?
If the answer is Yes, use the Core Questions using Waves or Reusable Questions methods.
Reusable Questions
On Makerble you have a Questions Library
It means you can add the same question to several separate surveys without creating duplicate questions
How to use use the Separate Surveys method
Stage 1: Handle the Reusable Questions
If each project will have its own version of a question, each project will need to have its own copy of the survey.
Add the copied version to the specific project(s) that you want to receive this edition of the survey
Remove any questions that are not needed in that project’s edition of the survey
Deal with sections and text, date, time or file upload questions
Go to the Manage Fields page and edit the question’s wording for each version of the survey
Deal with Multiple Choice questions
Turn on Edit Mode for the survey
Press Edit next to the Multiple Choice question you want to tailor
A popup launches
Select Only on this survey rather than “All”
In the Name field: adjust the wording of the question and press Save.
But if the wording you want to use for the question is too long. Come up with an abbreviated version of the question name and then follow these steps to add custom wording to this question
Stage 2: Create new Bespoke Questions as required
Where new questions are needed, create them within that project’s edition of the survey by
go to the Set the Questions page
pressing Create a question or section
Stage 3: Make final edits
As required…
Now you're ready to collect survey responses.
How to use the Single Survey method
Check that there is at least one Wave on each project that you want to tailor the question for. If there isn’t a Wave, create one. If there isn’t a spare wave, create one. (How to create a Wave)
Go to the Personalised Wording page of the survey and follow the steps in this article which are outlined below:
Select the project you want to tailor the question for
Select the wave you want to save the tailored wording to
Select the question you want to tailor
Choose the Audience you want the tailoring to be applied to (typically this is Respondents or Members of the Public)
Tailor the question for that Audience and press Save to close the popup