SurveyMonkey

Engage: Custom Questions

SURVEYMONKEY ENGAGE: SurveyMonkey Engage is another SurveyMonkey product that helps improve employee engagement across your organization. If you're interested in learning more, contact sales.

Custom questions are those questions you write yourself. Like Method questions, they’re 5-point rating scale questions that you can use over and over again to track performance overtime. Unlike Method Questions, they do not carry SurveyMonkey benchmarks and they do not impact any of the Engage Method scoring - the Overall Engagement Score or Core Factor scores.

You can create a custom question by going to your survey schedule and clicking “edit” on any pending survey. On the survey edit page, click “Edit” in the Questions section to access the question bank modal and click “create new.” A question wizard will walk you through how to make sure your question is phrased correctly for the rating scale and will surface any needed translations. Once a question is created, you’ll find it in the “Your Saved Questions” tab inside of the Question Bank modal. The most recently created question will land right on top of your list.

All custom questions are rating scale questions on a scale of 1-5. That scale translates to 1 = Strongly Disagree and 5 = Strongly Agree. All questions must be phrased as positive statements to ensure that scoring is comparable between questions. If a question is negatively phrased, the scoring will be flipped, with 1 denoting a positive emotion and 5 denoting a negative one. An ambiguously phrased question is likely to be difficult for employees to react to consistently.

A rating scale question is one which should elicit a thoughtful reaction. It’s best to keep it short, sweet, and to the point to avoid confusion or leading. Custom questions are designed to be reused throughout your Engage program so you can track them over time, it’s best to ensure that you write your question to be relevant now and in the future. Once a custom question runs in a survey and collects data, it is no longer editable.

If you click “Edit” on the survey edit page, you’ll now be taken to a full screen modal experience. The question bank allows you not only to add Engage Method questions to your survey, but also create and reuse custom questions. Simply check the questions you’d like to add - the system will keep them in a “cart” while you browse - and hit “save” to add all selected questions to your survey. They’ll populate at the bottom. Your surveys will have a 50-question limit to allow for better customization for your organization.

There is a limit of 50 custom questions you can write. They can be edited from the bank while in their draft state - that is, they haven’t run in a survey and collected data yet. Once they collect data, the question is closed to editing to enable direct comparison each time it runs. The new Questions tab in Analyze provides tools to analyze question performance over time.

If a question is edited while it’s sitting in one or many pending surveys, that draft question will change in every survey in which it is planned. Once a custom question runs in a survey, it becomes uneditable and will be available in the Questions tab for analysis. These questions are marked in the bank as Previously Run.

Custom Questions may be removed from the Question Bank. Should a question be removed from the bank it will be removed from any pending survey is which it’s scheduled. Data collected via this question will be retained everywhere it appears. Creating a new, identical question will not connect the data collected by the new and old question.

Custom Questions in Engage allow you to expand the data points you collect via Engage surveys beyond the Engage Method set of questions. They can be used once to spot-check an area of interest, but really shine when constructed to be used and reused over time. After creating a custom question, it lives in the Question Bank as a Draft question. In its draft state, the question can still be edited.

If your organization is utilizing localization in one or many of Engage’s supported languages, you will need to add the translations to each custom question. You will work with your Customer Success Manager to select languages for your organization. Should a new language need to be added, all custom questions will require updating with the new language. A custom question may be created without the translations should your team need time to add them, it will appear in the bank with a language error reminding you to provide it. A question cannot be added to a survey until all required language translations are provided.

Once a question is run in a survey, it is locked and transitions from a “Draft” to a “Previously Run” state. Previously Run questions may be analyzed individually to track performance over time. Custom questions sit outside of the Engage Method and, therefore, do not impact any Core Factor scores or the Overall Engagement score. At present, they must be evaluated on an individual basis and as a part of the surveys in which they run.

To track performance at the question level, there is now a Question tab within the Analyze section of Engage, which is available to Admins only. This tab displays trends, benchmarks, and a rating breakdown for each question that has run in your Engage program. This includes both Method Questions and Custom Questions.