When creating online surveys for your customers, employees, or students, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is asking the wrong questions. Different businesses and organizations have different needs required for their surveys. If you ask questions that are irrelevant to participants, they’re more likely to drop out before completing the survey. Using a questionnaire sample template will help to set you up for a successful survey.
Below is a collection of important sample survey questions with questionnaire examples for each question type:
Multiple Choice Questions are often a mix of radio buttons, checkboxes, and drop-down responses. This allows respondents to select one or more answers from a list of options. To get better results from your survey, consider configuring validation or randomize question choices.
Open ended questions come in the forms of comment boxes, single row text boxes, numeric input areas, and email address boxes. These types of questions are designed to collect narrative responses. Assign open-ended text as custom variables for data pre-population within the survey. This gives respondents a starting point for their responses and encourages them to give an accurate and thought out answer to your question.
A matrix question is a 2-dimensional version of the Multiple Choice question type. It is arranged like a table, where the questions are listed to the left and answer choices across the top.
There are three kinds of matrix questions: multi-point scales or dropdown matrix, checkbox or multi-select matrix, and spreadsheet matrix.
Multi-Point Scales / Dropdown Matrix: This type of matrix restricts participants to one selection choice per row.
Checkbox / Multi-Select Matrix: A Checkbox Matrix allows respondents to choose multiple answers per row of the table.
Spreadsheet Matrix: The final type of matrix question offers textboxes for participants to answer in their own words.
It is usually easiest to understand how a matrix question works by viewing it in a survey questionnaire sample.
There are four types of order and rating question types available to use in our survey software. You can see how each question type works in one of our questionnaire examples.
Rank Order / Drag & Drop: Rating or drag & drop questions allow respondents to arrange items in order of their preference.
Star Rating: These questions allow respondents to compare different items using a common rating scale. They can also be used to compare a list of items to each other. Constant Sum: This type of question enables respondents to weigh or assign values to the answer options.
Some surveys require you to include images, charts, or descriptive text to help respondents better understand a question. You can use display-only question types for this purpose.
Presentation text, section heading, and section sub-heading questions allow you to add descriptive text or images for giving instructions to your respondents. Presentation text questions can even be used as a separator for reading logic.
Some types of questions don’t fall into a specific category but are important for almost every type of survey. Check out our sample survey options for examples of how to use miscellaneous question types.
The date and time questions are designed to allow respondents to select a date, time, and year range. Additionally, contact information questions can collect personal information from the respondents in a single question. You can set your personal information questions to validate their zip code and phone number.
A side-by-side matrix is a multi-dimensional matrix that presents a compact way to ask the respondent for feedback on a range of categories. Each row of the matrix question can be rated across more than one category. See our questionnaire examples to get a better idea of ways you can use a side-by-side matrix.
Reference and validated data questions are used to collect and validate data against "standardized" databases such as zip codes. Dynamic Lookup Tables are used to represent hierarchies of data. They allow segmentation of options in a second menu based on the respondent's choice in the first menu.
These question types allow respondents to upload files with their survey responses. The upload type question allows respondents to upload documents, images, and audio/video files. Respondents also have the option to upload their digital signature into the survey as a type of digital identity verification.
A Net Promoter Score question is a scoring model for measuring customer satisfaction. It asks respondents to rate on a scale of 0 to 10, which is divided into sections of Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. Promoters are respondents who are positive about your brand while Passives have a neutral outlook. Detractors have a negative impression of your brand. The aggregate responses of each section are calculated and the net value of the Promoters is shown.
Sometimes absolute percent values do not convey enough information. Relative values play a vital role in the decision-making process of any business. You can assign weights for answer options of multiple-choice questions that may have a bigger impact on your business. A relative score can be displayed as well as a customized mean.
This type of question allows you to embed screen-shots or images of new versions of products or websites to be rated by users. Use the HTML code or select an image question type to display images. You can use our product satisfaction sample survey to get started implementing ratings into your surveys.
Choosing this type of question allows you to embed multi-media clips into the survey. Respondents can click on Play to view the clip before answering a question.
You can embed clips from YouTube into your surveys. This option is especially useful when large media files need to be embedded within the survey. YouTube provides an on-demand streaming video feed, so the respondent does not have to wait for the entire file to be buffered before it's played. You can now enter the YouTube ID of the video without having to use the video code for faster survey creation.
Large and small organizations usually like their surveys to "match" the look and feel of their website. This is especially useful for organizations whose customers are very familiar with their brand. Matching the look and feel of the survey to your overall brand is also likely to increase the response rate because the respondent will instantly recognize the sender. You can customize every part of the survey user interface using CSS.
With 94% of the world's population not speaking English as their first language and 75% not speaking English at all, it is imperative for organizations on a global level to deploy a multilingual model for all their business correspondences, client feedback, employee appraisals, research projects, etc. QuestionPro supports multiple languages! The multilingual functionality allows clients to add text for each question and answer option in the language you want to offer to your respondents and also displays the buttons and validation messages in that language.
We support all Right-to-Left Languages like Arabic and Hebrew. Not only is the text displayed from right to left, but also the radio buttons and check-boxes are displayed in that way. Check out our some of our Arabic language sample survey examples to get an idea of how questions are displayed.
We also support the use of logograms within the questions and answer text of the survey with languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
You may have put together a questionnaire sample or even an entire survey in an offline program before using QuestionPro. If there's a survey with specific questions that you've already used, you can easily import it straight into the QuestionPro interface. Simply upload the survey questions in a Word Document and our survey software will populate your questions.
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