Creating Surveys
Click Create Survey in the upper-right corner of your account and choose one of the options: Start from scratch, copy an existing survey, search surveys and templates, or use build it for me.
We have several open-ended and closed-ended question types. The settings within a question allow you to control the type of data the question will collect. Make sure you pick the question type that's going to report the data you want.
Question Bank is a library containing hundreds of questions you can add to your survey in seconds. These questions are written and certified by our very own survey methodologists.
Survey Design & Character Limits
A list of survey design and character limits you may encounter while creating or taking a survey.
Add new questions to your survey from the BUILDER, QUESTION BANK, or by clicking +New Question on the Design Survey page. When you add a new question, an editing view appears where you can enter your question text and customize the question. All question types, including Text and Image, count towards the 10-question limit of the Free plan.
5 Tips for Writing a Great Survey
Define your objectives. Work backwards. Check for bias. Do a test drive. Collect results and analyze data.
If you've already written your survey questions outside of SurveyMonkey, you can copy and paste questions and answer choices into SurveyMonkey all at once, instead of adding each question one by one.
Deleting questions in the survey design will also delete any responses collected.
Edit your survey title from the Design Survey tab. The survey title appears at the top of each survey page, unless you choose to hide it.
Adding a Consent Statement or Privacy Notice
You can ask respondents to agree to your consent statement or your privacy notice or practices before taking your survey. Use Skip Logic to disqualify respondents who don't consent to your terms.
Can I upload or import a survey?
You can't upload a survey you created offline or import responses collected offline—you must manually enter each response.
Accessibility When Using SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey understands the importance of accessibility on the web and empowers you to make surveys that are Section 508 and WCAG2 compliant. In this article, learn how you can create accessible surveys and how to use a screen reader to navigate SurveyMonkey surveys.
Inclusive Language Design
Copy or move questions within a survey.
Build with AI, powered by OpenAI, makes it easy and quick to create a survey.
Create forms to capture the information you need and embed or send your form where people can fill it out. You can then view and take action on your responses.
Creating Surveys from Templates
Get started with a survey template. You can still customize the survey and questions when starting from a template—add or edit questions, delete questions, and change the look and feel of the survey.
Add a payment page to the end of your survey and accept payments through our integration with Stripe.
Turn any survey into a quiz by adding quiz questions! When people answer a quiz question, you can tell them whether they got the answer right, or keep their scores to yourself. When you analyze your results, you'll get overall score statistics, and individual scores for each person that took the quiz.
Benchmarkable Questions & Templates
You can create a survey to benchmark by using Question Bank or our expert-certified templates. The benchmark icon indicates whether a question or template is benchmarkable.
Using a Survey for an Election or Poll
Create a poll or voting environment using a Multiple Choice question and an Email Invitation Collector.
Employee Engagement Survey Templates
We have a great benchmarkable survey template devoted to employee engagement. You can find more employee surveys by browsing survey templates in the Human Resources category.
Covid-19 Symptom Tracking Survey
The COVID-19 Symptom Tracking and Risk Assessment survey is a tool to help your employees return to work safely. Start with a template with key questions to help make decisions about coming in to work. Based on people's answers, they'll be put into groups and you can set up a custom message to help guide their next steps.
Return to Work solutions are a way for HR leaders to understand employees’ feelings about working remotely, returning to work, and working in shared spaces. Start with an editable survey template with guided setup, decide how frequently you want to send the survey out, and access automatically created reports with insights from your results.
When you use our pre-built NPS template or question type, we'll calculate your score automatically so you can easily see if your Promoters outweigh your Detractors.
The Comment Box question allows you to collect long open-ended responses.
The Single Textbox question allows you to collect short open-ended answers from respondents. You can also validate the question to require answers in a specific length or format.
Collect multiple open-ended answers with a single question. You can also configure this question to collect numerical data only.
Contact Information Question (Demographic)
Use the Contact Information or Demographic question to collect respondent demographic information like name, address, email, and phone number through a single question.
The Date/Time question allows you to collect date and time information in a consistent format.
The File Upload question lets respondents attach files to their response.
Using the Name question type, you can collect First name, Last name, Middle name, Title, and Suffix from a single question.
Collect email addresses using the Email question type.
Collect phone numbers and extensions using the Phone question type.
Using the Address question type, you can collect street address, city/town, state/province, zip/postal code, or country from a single question.
Multiple Choice is a simple closed-ended question type that lets respondents select one answer from a defined list of choices.
Checkboxes is a simple closed-ended question type that lets respondents select multiple answers from a defined list of choices.
Dropdown is a closed-ended question that allows respondents to choose one answer choice from a list of choices presented in a dropdown menu.
Image Choice is a simple, closed-ended question type that lets respondents select one or more image answers from a defined list of image choices. The images auto-format to look great on desktop or mobile.
A Matrix question is a set of questions or statements that share answer choices. This question type is arranged like a table or grid. A Rating Scale question (like a Likert Scale) assigns weights to each answer choice.
The Ranking question asks respondents to compare items to each other by placing them in order of preference. An average ranking is calculated for each answer choice, allowing you to quickly evaluate the most preferred answer choice.
The Star Rating question lets respondents evaluate a statement on a visual scale of stars, hearts, thumbs, or smilies. A weight is assigned to each icon in the scale, so a weighted average is calculated in the Analyze Results section.
The Slider question lets respondents rate an item or statement on a numerical scale by dragging an interactive slider.
Click Map questions let you get feedback directly on an image. You can add an image to your survey and ask survey takers to click a certain spot on the image. For example, if you upload a picture of your product, you could ask people to click the part of the package that is most appealing to them.
Matrix of Dropdown Menus Question
The Matrix of Dropdown Menus question allows respondents to evaluate several items using the same set of measurements by choosing from a preset list of answer choices.
When you use our pre-built NPS template or question type, we'll calculate your score automatically so you can easily see if your Promoters outweigh your Detractors.
The Best Worst Scale question is a closed-ended question that asks survey takers to select the best and worst option from a list of items. This lets you find out what survey takers value.
Making Survey Questions Required
You can make any question in your survey required so that respondents must answer it before submitting the page. By default, required questions are marked by an asterisk (*), but you can choose to hide the asterisks from the OPTIONS section of the sidebar in the Design Survey section of your survey.
Adding an N/A (Not Applicable) Option
You can add an N/A option to a Matrix/Rating Scale or Ranking question so that those answers will not factor into the weighted average calculated in the Analyze Results section.
Adding an “Other” Textbox or Comment Field
Adding "Other" allows respondents to provide an alternative answer if the available answer choices don't apply to them. When editing the question, below the answer options, check the box to Add an "Other" Answer Option for Comments.
Sorting, Randomizing, or Flipping Answer Choices
Use the Sort, Randomize or Flip Choices feature to change the order of answer choices to your respondents.
Validating Open-Ended Text Fields
You can validate some open-ended question types to require respondents to enter their answer in a specific format.
Changing the Question Size and Layout
You can change the position or layout of questions on a page to make questions appear side-by-side or on different parts of the page. You can also change how the answer choices for Multiple Choice or Checkboxes questions are arranged.
If you need to add a large number of answer choices, you can copy and paste a list all at once instead of adding each choice one by one.
Tooltips give survey takers more information about a specific word or phrase in your survey. You can use a tooltip to define a word in your survey people may not be familiar with or give extra context about how to answer a survey question.
Answer Genius helps you quickly build surveys with more confidence—just choose an answer type to automatically add a set of prewritten answer choices to your question.
Can I create a question that sums the numbers or shows a running total?
You can require textbox fields to add up to a fixed sum (must be a positive whole number).
Can I assign numerical values to answer choices?
Display basic statistics to see the minimum, maximum, mean, median, and standard deviation for a question. You can also assign numerical values to answer choices for some question types.
Can I limit the number of answer choices a respondent can select?
If you make a question required to answer, you can set a range or a limit on the number of answers choices a respondent can select.
You can add images that are separate from any questions, or add images to question text or answer options.
You can format text to bold, italicize, underline, hyperlink, or change the font, color, or size of words. Some themes bold question text by default—manage this setting in the typography settings of your theme.
Adding or Editing a Logo to Your Survey Design
Use customizing options like adding a logo to complement your website or brand.
Use the rich text editor to add a video to your survey.
You can use the advanced rich text editor to add a table to your survey in question text and Page Description fields.
Use the rich text editor to add a link to your survey.
Insert additional text to your survey design to provide extra context or instructions to respondents.
If you need to edit a question in New Design that contains existing HTML added in Classic Design, unsupported HTML will be stripped from the question when you save your changes.
You can add a new page, or split an existing page, from the BUILDER section of the sidebar. Click the More Actions menu at the top of any page to copy, move, or delete a page.
The Survey End Page collector option lets you choose what survey takers see after they complete your survey. Use the default SurveyMonkey end page, redirect to another website, close the window, or loop the survey back to the beginning to collect more responses.
Page Titles & Page Descriptions
Page Titles give respondents a clear understanding of what kinds of questions will be on a page. Page Descriptions add additional information or instructions respondents might need to answer the questions on that page.
How to create an effective survey introduction—example introduction included.
By default, page numbers will be hidden from view, and automatic question numbering will be turned on. You can toggle question and page numbering on and off in the survey Options.
Can a respondent fill out the same question or page multiple times?
You can allow respondents to take a survey more than once or copy questions so respondents can fill out as many as they need. If those options don't meet your needs, Wufoo might be right for you.
Change the appearance of your survey by changing the colors, fonts, applying a theme, or customizing options like the logo and footer.
You can fine-tune the appearance of your survey by showing or hiding certain elements on the survey page, or adjusting the layout.
Responses are saved when a respondent clicks Next or Done. You can edit the text of the navigation buttons and remove the Exit Survey option.
Changing the SurveyMonkey Footer
Depending on your SurveyMonkey plan, you can make the footer grey to blend in with your survey, or hide the SurveyMonkey footer in your survey design, email invitation, or embedded surveys completely.
The Conversation survey format displays your survey questions like a chat conversation in a messaging app.
Survey format refers to the way your survey displays to people and how they interact with it. You can choose from 3 survey formats: Classic, One Question at a Time, or Conversation.
This survey format lets you focus your attention on one question at a time in the center of the screen. After answering a question, you can scroll or click the OK button to progress to the next question.
Progress bars let people to see how much of the survey they've finished, and how much they still need to complete.
By default, page numbers will be hidden from view, and automatic question numbering will be turned on. You can toggle question and page numbering on and off in the survey Options.
With a paid plan, there are many ways to customize your survey to complement your website or brand. With certain paid plans, you can hide SurveyMonkey branding.
Applying logic to your survey lets you control the behavior of your survey and enhance the quality of your data.
Direct respondents through different paths in a survey based on the page they're on or their answer choice. Commonly used for consent forms, disqualification, or multilingual surveys. Also great if multiple people need to answers different sections of the same survey.
Skip Logic directs respondents through different paths in a survey. Question Skip Logic enables you to skip respondents to a future question or page in the survey based on their answer to a previous closed-ended question.
Skip Logic directs respondents through different paths in a survey. Page Skip Logic enables you to skip respondents from certain pages to specific destination pages further ahead in the survey.
Troubleshooting Skip Logic Issues
Review these common issues that arise when using Skip Logic, like respondents getting stuck or not being sent to the correct follow-up question.
A/B Testing allows you to randomly display different versions of a question, image, or free-standing text, and set the percentage of respondents that will be shown each variable.
Advanced Piping lets you insert information like custom variables, custom data from Contacts, or a respondent's answer to a previous question into your survey—allowing you to personalize the survey experience for each respondent that takes your survey.
Question & Answer Piping allows you to insert, or "pipe", answer text from a previous question into a question on a later page in the survey.
You can add a qualifying question to your survey to disqualify respondents who choose a particular answer option using Question Skip Logic. This allows you to disqualify respondents who don't meet your targeting criteria or consent to your terms. You can show respondents a custom disqualification message.
Using randomization can help reduce order bias and improve the quality of your data. One way to do that in SurveyMonkey is by using Question or Page Randomization to change the order in which people taking your survey see the questions.
Quotas enable you to automatically close a survey once it reaches a certain ratio of qualified responses.
Block Randomization logic allows you to group pages of your survey into blocks, and then add logic to rotate, flip, or randomize the blocks. You can also add logic to the pages within a single block. This minimizes order bias in your survey.
Advanced branching lets you customize the behavior of your survey based on a respondent's answers to one question, multiple questions, custom variables, or custom data from Contacts.
Carry Forward Responses allows you to funnel multiple answer choices from one question to another based on respondents' selections. You can choose to carry forward all the answers that the respondent selected, or all the answers that the respondent did not select.
Before sending a survey, use the Preview & Score section to make sure everything looks and works as expected. There are limits to editing a live survey, so it's helpful to edit your survey design before collecting responses. If you want to test your collector options, you can create a test collector.
Getting Feedback on Surveys and Results
You can invite others to give feedback on your survey design by sharing your survey preview link or sending an invite to comment. Once you collect survey responses, you can use a Shared Data Page to invite others to give feedback on your survey results.
SurveyMonkey Genius scores your survey and gives you personalized recommendations for making improvements before you send it out to get responses.