User's Manual

Smart Survey Design
Page 10
another type is the “mutli-chotomous” question, which allows respondents to choose one of
many answer choices (Brace 2004, 55-67).
Let‟s consider this example that asks similar information but uses different question types to
ask for the information:
Question 1: Have you used SurveyMonkey in the last year to send out a survey?
 Yes
 No
Question 2: How many times in the last year have you used SurveyMonkey to send out a
survey?
 Zero
 Once
 Twice
 Three or more times
Question 3: If you had to estimate, how many times have you used SurveyMonkey to send
out a survey? (Please write in an estimate number) __________
In this example, Question 3 (the open-ended question type) provides the most detail.
Here a respondent can type in the actual number or the estimated number of times s/he has
used the tool. The first type, Question 1 example, is the best for setting up a skip logic
scenario, consent form, or for basic/general information gathering. For closed-ended
questions, like Question 1 and 2, it is important to create answer choices that cover all
possible answers that are expected from that question. If you make the choices mutually
exclusive (or unable to all be true at the same time), then the participant is able to choose
the best possible answer (“Survey how to”).
2. Ranked or Ordinal Questions:
Ranking questions are best to use when all the choices listed should be ranked
according to a level of specification (e.g. level of importance). If you have a question in
which you need the respondents to indicate what items are the “most important” to “least
important,” then you can set up a ranking question (Waddington 2000). In this example on
page 11, you can create a Rating type question in SurveyMonkey and set the “forced
ranking” option. This allows only one row (answer choice) to have that rating applied.
Example: If you choose “survey templates” as your 1
st
choice, then no other row can be
selected as the 1
st
choice. The Forced Ranking option won‟t allow it.