When building your survey, you can choose from a range of survey question types in the Platform. The different questions are used to gather different types of responses. Combining them in your survey creates a comprehensive measure of how people feel – and what drives this.
Types of Questions
Question type | Description of Question | Example for using Question |
Likert question | A scale-based question. These questions ask respondents to rate a statement on a scale of how much they agree or disagree.
People Insight uses a 5-point Likert scale which is industry standard. | “I understand the aims of [organisation name]”
Likert scale for responses:
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Comment question | An open-ended question which collects written feedback from respondents.
Comment questions allow respondents to express their views in their own words. Combined with quantitative survey questions, they give a comprehensive picture of how people feel and why. | “What is the best thing about working for [organisation name]?” |
Descriptive content | A piece of descriptive text that can be used to add an introduction or instructions to your survey, or to give guidance on how to respond to a survey section. | “We would like to ask you a few questions about yourself, your job and the work you do for [organisation name]. If you do not feel comfortable answering any of these questions, please leave the answer blank or select the “Prefer not to say” option and move on to the next question.”
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Survey-specific variable question | Variable questions allow respondents to select a response from a list. Including these questions allows you to group responses in your results dashboard. You will be able to compare results for ‘Heads of’ vs ‘Senior Managers’ for example.
‘Survey specific’ variable questions are ones which are not included in the People Insight question library and will be unique to your organisation. You will need to create these in the Platform. | “Please select your role:”
Options for responses:
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Global variable question | Variable questions allow respondents to select a response from a list of options. Global variable questions are usually based on demographic data, so are helpful if you cannot upload this data. You can find global variable questions in the Question Library. | “How long have you worked at [organisation name]?”
Options for responses:
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Multi-select question | Multi-select questions allow respondents to select multiple options from a list. Similarly to a survey-specific variable question, you will be able to see the number of responses for each option but will not be able to filter by each option.
A good example of using this type of question is if you are asking respondents to select their top benefits from a list or asking what caring responsibilities they have. | “Do you have any caring responsibilities for people in the following categories?”
Please select all that apply:
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