21  Survey Checklist

You can use this checklist to ensure your survey is set up correctly and follows best practices. Items that are pre-checked are enabled by default.

21.1 Survey Builder

• Spell check (e.g. use your browser’s spell check or a third-party tool like Grammarly)
• Label blocks (e.g., Demographics) and questions (e.g. change “Q2” to “age”) for easier analysis
• Use “Force Response” only where necessary variables (e.g., informed consent or event sign-up); otherwise, use “Request response” instead
• Include validation for open-ended questions (e.g., content type, length, etc.)
• Set Recode Values for multiple-choice and matrix questions
• Set “None of the above” options in check-all-that-apply questions as “Exclusive”
• Allow “Text Entry” for “Other (Please Specify)” options, or include a separate follow-up question with Display Logic
• Turn on “Mobile friendly” for questions (enabled by default)
• Check question logic (e.g., display, skip, etc.)
• Preview the survey
• Check the “ExpertReview” suggestions
• After you initially publish your survey, re-publish each time you make changes

21.2 Survey Options

21.2.1 General tab

• Change the survey “Display Name” and “Survey Description”
• Turn on “ExpertReview”
• Turn on “New Survey taking experience”

21.2.2 Responses tab

• Enable the back button
• Turn on “Allow respondents to finish later”

21.2.3 Security tab

• Turn on “prevent multiple submissions” if applicable
• Turn on “bot detection”
• Turn on “prevent indexing”
• Turn on “anonymize responses” if necessary

21.3 Look and Feel

• Change next and back buttons to text rather than an arrow symbol (e.g., Next page/Previous page)
• Change the ‘next’ button text to “Submit” after last question (in last Block settings)

21.4 Survey Flow

• Preview the survey to test the survey flow
• Optional: Customize the end-of-survey message (for all respondents, or for those who meet certain criteria)

21.5 Accessibility

• Use the “New Survey taking experience” (on by default; see Section 4.1.1)
• If your survey includes images, add alt text
• If your survey includes audio files, add captions
• Indicate validation and formatting clearly (e.g., “please enter a date in MM/DD/YYYY format”)
• Check readability and contrast if you changed font size or color