Create a survey for people to answer on your website or to use during phone banking.
Supported question and answer formats are:
- multiple choice
- yes/no
- free text
A single answer can be chosen for each question. Each question will display on a separate page within your website and a respondent can skip a question or stop the survey at any time. These parameters are designed to encourage as many people as possible to complete as much of the survey as possible. If someone does not answer all questions, a point person could follow up to determine why the questions weren’t answered and to try to gather the answers.
Step-by-step guide to creating a survey
Go to Websites > {Your Website Name} > New page. Give a name to your survey. The slug will auto-populate based on the name, but you can change it if you like. Select Survey as the page type and decide whether to include it in the top nav or support nav. Click the Create new page button.
You’ll be taken to edit the survey in the Survey details > Settings area.
NationBuilder makes it possible to ask all survey questions, not just ones underneath this page - so that you can have a “master survey” of all questions in your nation. Generally, you’ll want to uncheck the box next to this option.
You can also choose whether to ask for volunteers during the survey process. If a responder indicates she’s interested in volunteering, she’ll be directed to your primary volunteer signup page after completing the survey.
Additional options:
- You can create an action chain by choosing the next page a person will land on when she finishes the survey.
- You can assign people who fill out the survey to a point person.
- If a responder already has a point person, that designation will not be changed.
- You can tag all responders with a tag or tags - multiple tags are separated by commas and an individual tag can include spaces.
- If you check the box next to “Mark people who leave feedback on this page as needing follow-up,” you can then define the follow-up type and due date. The due date is related to the date action occurs on the page.
So, if a person completed the survey today and the due date is set for the “same day,” then you’re expecting the point person to follow-up today. You can edit the follow-up types available by going to Settings > Defaults > Contact types.
Once you have completed these elements of Survey settings click the Save settings button to save your changes.
Introduce your survey and add media
You can provide people with an introduction to the survey under Survey details > Intro blurb. As with other content editors, you can include images by saving them to the File section and using the insert / edit image icon to add them to your page. You can embed content from the web by entering the URL for the content on its own line in the content editor. When you click the Save intro text button, content from the web that is found via NationBuilder’s Embed.ly integration will be previewed below the intro text box.
Adding your first questions
Next, go to the Survey details > New question area to create your first survey question. You’ll need to fill in is the slug for your question. This should be a short version of the topic of the question and will be the question’s page slug. Each question in your survey will be asked on a separate page.
Next, you’ll need to define the full question you’ll be asking. Remember that your format choices are multiple choice, yes/no, or text. In a multiple choice question, a responder can only choose one of the possible responses.
If you’d like to explain the question further you can do so in the Intro area, though that is not required.
There is a checkbox that is automatically checked to display possible responses to the survey taker in random order. This can be useful to help alleviate the possibility that response order has an effect on whether it is chosen. If you uncheck the box, then the response order you determine will be the same for everyone taking the survey.
What kind of questions will you ask?
Next you choose the question format. Once you save a question with a question format, you’ll be able to edit the question (and possible responses if you selecting the multiple choice format), but you won’t be able to change the question format. If you decide to change a question from multiple choice to yes/no or vice versa, you’ll need to create a new question.
The status of the question works the same as any page status - if you leave “published” checked, the question will be immediately published. This can be helpful, so that you don’t have to edit the question status later in the process. Until you publish the survey page, a site visitor won’t have a clear way to see this question page, unless you give her the URL for the page.
You can tag people who answer the question with a tag or multiple tags separated by commas.
Once you have completed this area click the Save survey question button.
If you created a multiple choice question, you’ll be able to enter Possible responses for your question:
- Enter the first response option in Response.
- You can then choose to enter a message to show a person after she responds.
- You can tag people who choose this response with a person tag or tags.
Once you have completed the answer click the Add possible response button to save it.
You can continue adding answer choices until you have entered all possible responses.
When you have more than one possible response, they will be listed on the right side of the page. You can drag and drop to change the order to display results. If your question is set to randomly display response options, the order created on this page will not affect how responses are displayed on your live site.
Navigating Options in a Survey Question
The Dashboard provides an overview of responses to your question. Responses is an area where you can answer the question on behalf of someone else. You can enter the person’s name, email address or Twitter handle. If the person exists in your database, the answer will be recorded as part of the person’s profile. Otherwise, a new profile will be created for the person and the answer will be recorded (along with any tags you’ve indicated should be created when a person answers the question or selects a question response).
The Possible responses area lists the responses you’ve already created. Those responses can be edited and new responses can be added.
The Settings area allows you to edit the question itself. You cannot change the question format (i.e. whether answers are yes/no, multiple choice, or text). You can change the status from drafted to published or deleted in this area.
To move from the options of a particular survey question to the full list of your questions, click on “Questions” in the breadcrumbs at the top of the page.
You’ll see a list of questions you’ve created, status, format, and number of responses under >Survey details > Questions. You can drag and drop them to change the order they will be displayed. Published questions at the top will be asked first. Under Survey details > Results you’ll see the results for all of the questions within your survey, whether or not they have been published. A drafted question can still be answered via the control panel of your nation.
Exporting survey results to a spreadsheet
Before you begin exporting the responses to your survey under Survey details > Export, you’re given the option to include just responses gathered from this page. This could be an important limitation if your questions are also asked via a different survey.
When you click the Start export button, the system will begin developing a .csv file of the responses to your questions. Depending on how many people have responded, this can take a small amount of time. Once the export is complete, the .csv file will be listed under the heading “Previous exports.” You can download the file by clicking on its name. The file can be opened in Microsoft Excel or any spreadsheet software. Answers will be listed by the responder and each line of information will include the following:
- NationBuilder ID
- First Name
- Last Name
- PC (currency total)
- Answers to each question within your survey identified by slug
