Why It Matters
Collect at scale without sacrificing structure. Gather hundreds of responses while keeping questions, logic, and data quality consistent. Reuse the same builder across methods. Surveys, panel signup forms, and unmoderated tests all share the same question builder — skills transfer, and so do saved questions. Real per-question results, not just raw exports. Every question gets its own chart in the Summary view, so you don’t have to build your own analysis just to see the shape of your data. Flexible distribution. Share a direct link, embed it in email invites, recruit externally, or point participants at a survey you’ve built in another tool entirely.Common Use Cases
Question Types
The survey builder supports: Short Text, Long Text, Email, Number, Website, Yes/No, Single Select, Multi Select, Linear Scale (the closest equivalent to an NPS or rating question), Date, Location, Matrix, and Info (a text/image block with no answer).Note: There’s no dedicated ranking question, no file-upload response type, and no way to randomize or shuffle question or answer order today. If you need one of these, it’s worth checking with support for a workaround before assuming it’s not possible.
Logic (Skip Logic & Branching)
Skip logic lets you show or hide questions based on prior answers, and branching lets you route participants to different question paths — including ending the survey early — based on how they respond.Note: The progress indicator participants see updates as their skip-logic path is evaluated, not from a full look-ahead of their final path. On surveys with heavy branching, the number participants see can shift as they move through the survey rather than reflecting their exact remaining question count from the start.
Set up a survey
Step 1: Create your study
Navigate to Studies, select New study → Survey, and configure the details — title, participation limits, segments, time commitment, incentives, screeners, consent forms, and language preferences.Step 2: Set up your screener (optional)
Add multiple-choice, text, or scale questions with conditional logic rules.Step 3: Configure external recruitment (optional)
Enter the participant count and targeting criteria if you’re sourcing participants through Great Question’s external recruitment marketplace integration, rather than your own candidates or panel.Step 4: Build your survey questions
- Add questions using the supported types listed above.
- Include helper text and mark questions as required where needed.
- Use AI-assisted generation to draft questions.
- Add images to a question for context (PNG, EPS, JPEG, GIF) — this attaches an image to the question itself, not a file-upload answer type for participants.
- Apply skip logic and map responses to attributes.
- Reuse content from the Question Library or Templates.
Step 5: Review and publish
Verify all sections and click Create to publish.Bringing Your Own Survey Tool
If you’d rather host the questionnaire itself somewhere else — Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Formsort, Google Forms, or another tool — you can point Great Question at it instead of building in the native builder.- In your study’s Survey settings, set Platform to the tool you’re using.
- If you’re using Qualtrics, connect your account (if it isn’t already) and select your survey from the Survey dropdown. For any other platform, paste your survey’s URL into the Survey link field.
- Make sure your external survey has an embedded data field or variable called gq_token. Great Question automatically appends this token to the link participants use, and it’s what matches a completed response back to the right participant. Formsort requires it as an “external variable”; Qualtrics requires it as an “embedded data” field.
- (Optional) Under Embed Candidate Attributes, select any additional candidate attributes you want passed along as extra URL parameters — useful if your external tool can prefill fields or branch based on that data. Great Question shows a live example of the final URL as you select attributes.
Note: A “link not working” or “blocked” error when setting this up is almost always a missing or misconfigured gq_token — double-check it’s present in your external survey’s URL or embedded data before assuming the link itself is broken.
Manage your study after publishing
Setup
Adjust participant limits, customize communications, update pages, enable automations, and configure notifications.Execution
Add candidates, track progress, manage recruitment requests, monitor email performance, and review screener responses.Results
The Summary view gives you Overall and Individual tabs, with a chart for every question — bar charts for multi-select, pie charts for single-select/yes-no/scale questions, and a response list for free-text answers. Export your data with the Export CSV button, or share results with Copy link.Note: Summary and Stats cover per-question results and email performance (opens, clicks, completion counts) — there’s no in-survey drop-off or funnel analytics (which question participants abandon on, view counts on the survey itself). If completion looks low, you won’t get a per-question breakdown of where people are leaving.
Best Practices
Test your survey yourself before publishing. Since there’s no drop-off analytics to diagnose a low-completing survey after the fact, walking through it yourself first — especially any branching paths — is your best safeguard. Use a required identifying field if duplicate responses are a concern. There’s no built-in duplicate or multiple-response prevention today (no email or IP-based deduplication). A required email field plus a manual review, or distributing via individual invites rather than one open link, are your best mitigations. Double-check multi-language availability before promising it to participants. Great Question’s language setting translates the surrounding interface, not authored question translations, and it’s gated to certain plans. If you’re using a survey template, review disqualifying logic after applying it. Templates may not carry over ideal-answer/disqualification settings automatically — set those directly on the study’s screener once the template is applied.Troubleshooting
| Issue | What’s Happening | How to Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Missing invite emails | Delivery may have failed, or the sender configuration is off. | Check delivery status in the Stats tab and verify your default sender email settings. |
| Survey submission failures | Required fields aren’t completed, or the flow hits an unexpected state. | Confirm required fields are correctly labeled and test the full flow in Preview mode. |
| Progress not recorded between sessions | Answers are only submitted once, when the participant reaches the end — there’s no incremental save as they go. | Encourage participants to complete the survey in one sitting; leaving before the end loses whatever was answered so far, and there’s no setting that preserves it. |
| The question counter seems inconsistent with branching | The progress indicator recalculates based on the path already taken, not a full look-ahead of the final path. | This is expected on surveys with heavy branching — the count can shift as participants move through the survey. |
| Logic isn’t behaving as expected | A skip-logic rule’s condition or destination question doesn’t match what you intended. | Review the logic path between the two questions involved and confirm the condition and destination. |
| Exported data looks incomplete | An active filter on the results view is limiting what gets exported. | Clear any active filters before exporting. |
| Need a specific column (like completion date) in the export | The CSV export includes a fixed set of columns today. | There’s no way to add custom columns to the export directly — note this as a limitation if your workflow depends on a specific field. |
| Want an anonymized or pseudonymized export | There’s no built-in anonymized export variant. | Export normally, then remove or replace identifying columns yourself before sharing externally. |
| Getting duplicate or multiple responses from the same person | There’s no built-in duplicate-response prevention by email or IP. | Require an identifying field like email and review responses manually, or distribute via individual invites instead of one open link. |
| Need to delete a specific response | There’s no direct way to delete a single response. | Removing the participant removes their full participation record, including their response — there’s no way to clear just the response and keep the participant. |
| My external survey link isn’t accepting responses | Almost always a missing or misconfigured gq_token in the external survey’s URL or embedded data. | Confirm the token is present and correctly mapped in your external tool’s setup. |
Still need help? Contact us at support@greatquestion.co — median response time is 19 minutes during support hours.