Build a questionnaire

Open Questionnaires, create one, and you land in the builder.

1. 1Add a section for each group of related questions. Sections become the steps the recipient walks through.
2. 2Add questions to each section, choosing a type: Question types.
3. 3Give a question help text where the wording alone is not enough.
4. 4Mark the ones that are genuinely required.
5. 5Preview it and answer it yourself before anyone else does.

Sections are what make a long questionnaire survivable. Twenty questions on one page reads as work; the same twenty in four steps of five reads as progress. Name the sections after what they are about, so the recipient can see where they are.

Required means required. Every mandatory question is a place the person can get stuck and give up — particularly if it asks for something they have to go and look up. Mark as required only what you genuinely cannot proceed without, and let the rest be optional.

Help text prevents the worst answers. "What is your budget?" gets a range of interpretations; the same question with a line explaining what it is for and in what currency gets a usable number.

There is AI help for a first draft — describe what you are trying to find out and it generates a starting set of questions. Treat it as a draft: it will cheerfully produce fifteen questions when six would do.

Answer it yourself, on a phone. The preview is not optional. Half the recipients will use a phone, and a question that reads fine on your monitor can be unanswerable there.