Question types

Text answers

• Text — a single line. Names, references, short answers.
• Long text — a paragraph. Use it sparingly: it is the type nobody can summarise across fifty responses.

Specific formats, which validate what is typed and are worth using instead of plain text every time they apply:

• Number, Email, Phone, URL, Date, Date and time.

Choices

• Yes/No — a clean binary.
• Dropdown — one answer from a list.
• Multi-select — several answers from a list.

Scales

• Rating — stars or a numeric score, for "how good was this".
• Likert — agree-to-disagree across a set of statements, for attitudes rather than scores.

Structure

• Heading — not a question at all: a label that breaks a long section up or explains what follows.

The rule that matters: prefer a choice over free text. Every free-text answer has to be read by a person and cannot be counted, filtered or charted. Ten responses is fine; a hundred is a job nobody does. If you can write the plausible answers down, make it a dropdown — and leave one free-text question at the end for what you did not anticipate.

Rating or Likert? Rating for an experience ("how satisfied are you"), Likert for a belief ("the reporting is easy to understand"). Mixing them in one block makes both harder to read.

Ask what you will act on. A question whose answer would not change anything you do is a question that costs you completion rate for nothing.