Qualtrics

A typical project consists of a survey, a distribution record, responses, and reports. To make it easy to create a new project, Qualtrics gives you five guiding options. You can start with:

• Blank survey projects
• Copies of existing surveys
• Solution templates
• Templates in your survey library
• Exported Qualtrics Survey Format (QSF) files

See the Creating a Project help article for guidance on creating a project.

The Projects page is designed to help you easily sort, manage, and access your work. Key features include:

1. Ticket Tracking – Monitor any support tickets assigned to you or your team.
2. Folders and Categories – Group projects by type or purpose.
3. Expandable Views – Collapse or expand projects for a cleaner layout.
4. Sorting Options – Sort by project name, type, or last modified date.
5. Search Functionality – Quickly locate projects by name.
6. Project Metrics – View summary data at a glance.

To the right of every project name, you’ll see three dots that open the project actions dropdown menu. Here you can

• Activate, rename, or delete projects
• Copy or edit surveys
• Translate content
• Access additional settings

Learn more in the Organizing & Viewing Your Projects help article.

Qualtrics allows you to collaborate with colleagues by sharing project access. You can work together on surveys without sharing account credentials and set specific permissions to control what collaborators can do.

For example, you might:

• Allow translators to upload translations without granting access to response data.
• Enable teammates to edit questions or analyze results collaboratively.

See the Collaborating on Projects help article for more information.

Imported data projects allow you to use data from other external sources to analyze in Qualtrics. These project types are particularly useful for analyzing your operational data collected outside Qualtrics with your experience data collected inside Qualtrics.

For guidance, visit the Imported Data Projects help article.

When you open the Survey tab, you’ll the see the survey builder’s most prominent features:

1. Survey toolbar
2. Question block
3. Question editing area
4. Question editing pane

See the Survey Basic Overview help article for more information.

Qualtrics offers over 100 question types to support a wide variety of data collection needs. To select a question type:

• Click the dropdown arrow next to Add new question and choose from the list.

View all available question types in the Question Types help article.

Once you’ve created a question, you can customize it to fit your survey. To begin formatting a question, click on it in the survey builder.

See the Formatting Questions help article for more information.

Once you’ve created a question and formatted it the way you want, it’s time to add some choices for your respondents to pick from.

See the Formatting Answer Choices help article for ways to add, remove, and customize answer choices.

The Rich Content Editor enables advanced formatting of survey text, including:

• Bold, italic, underline
• Font and color changes
• Hyperlinks, lists, tables
• Image and video embeds

Learn more in the Rich Content Editor help article.

By default, your survey questions will be displayed together on one page, but you can help prevent survey fatigue and improve your respondents’ experience by breaking your survey into multiple pages.

See the Add Page Break help article for more information.

Response requirements and validation are used to alert respondents about questions they may have missed, or they can be used to solicit a specific kind of answer from respondents. To add validation to your question, navigate to the Response Requirements section of the survey builder.

In the Response requirements section, you can apply:

Requirements:

• Force Response – The respondent must answer the question before proceeding with the survey.
• Request Response – Alerts the respondent about any unanswered questions, but allows the respondent to continue the survey without answering.

Validation:

• Custom Validation – Used to force a certain type of response (for example, making sure a respondent selects the right amount of answer choices in a multi-select question).
• Content Validation – Used to force a certain response based on a certain type of content (such as when you want a respondent to enter a valid email address). This validation is used in questions that allow free response.
• Question-Specific Validation – Certain questions have built-in validation options. For example, constant sum questions have an additional option to require the question to total up to a specific value.

When any of the validation options are enabled, an asterisk icon will appear in the top right corner of the question, indicating that the question has some form of validation.

Piped Text lets you personalize your survey by dynamically inserting information from:

• Previous answers
• Embedded data
• Contact lists

For example, if a respondent selects "Microsoft Excel" as their software in one question, the next page can say: "You selected Microsoft Excel."

Although piped text appears as a line of code in the survey editor, it is automatically replaced with the specified content when the respondent views the survey.

See the Piped Text help article for more information.

For each question in a survey, you can enable behavior that enhances your survey design, such as randomizing answer choices, hiding the question based on certain conditions, adding default choices, and more.

To access question behavior, either right-click on the question or use the Edit question pane to the left of your selected question.

See the Question Behavior help article for more information and a list of available questions and their behavior.

“Logic” refers to the condition a respondent must meet in order to see a question, receive an email, or trigger some other behavior in a Qualtrics survey. Each of the following features in Qualtrics uses logic in some way:

• Branch logic for showing a block of questions conditionally.
• Display logic for showing a single question conditionally.
• Quotas for determining which respondents should count toward a response limit you set.
• Custom validation for requiring respondents to meet certain answer requirements before proceeding in a survey.

See the Using Logic article for more information.

Blocks are groups of related survey questions. Use them to:

• Organize longer surveys (e.g., “Introduction” and “Main Survey” blocks).
• Apply logic to entire sections of your survey.
• Randomize blocks for experimental design.

See the Block Options help article for information to create and edit question blocks.

Customize what happens when a respondent completes your survey. Options include:

• Displaying a custom thank-you message
• Redirecting to another webpage
• Anonymizing responses

You can navigate to the end of survey options by clicking the End of Survey element at the bottom of the survey editor.

See the Editing the End of the Survey help article for more information.

Survey tools are features to help you create online surveys and give them advanced functionality. These features include:

• Auto-numbering questions
• Generating test responses
• Survey accessibility checks

You can access survey tools by clicking on Tools in the Survey tab.

See the Survey Tools help article for more information and a list of the different survey tools available.

The Survey flow is where you customize the order in which respondents experience the elements of your survey. As the name suggests, it’s where you determine the “flow” of your survey. 

Use it to:

• Control question order
• Randomize questions or blocks
• Apply embedded data
• Create customized experiences for different respondent groups

See the Survey Flow help article for more information.

The Survey Options menu allows you to manage survey settings such as:

• Survey availability timeframe
• Back button visibility
• Display of question numbers
• Data protection and security settings

To access these settings, click Survey options from the left navigation on the Survey tab.

See the Survey Options help article for more information.

The way your survey looks can determine how well it performs. The good news is that Qualtrics gives you the ability to customize the appearance of your survey in many different ways. Whether you use a custom-built theme built by design experts, or you choose to individually customize specific survey elements yourself, Qualtrics gives you the ability to build visually appealing surveys like no other platform. The look and feel menu changes how your survey looks to respondents when they take your survey.

To access these customization options, go to the Look and feel menu in the Survey tab.

Once you have finished building your survey, you can preview it to ensure that everything is working the way you want by clicking Preview in the top-right of the Survey tab.

In the preview survey mode, you can answer questions and move through the survey the same way your respondents would with a real link. The survey will look exactly the same as in the real link, except you’ll have some additional options available at the top to help you test your survey; these options won’t appear in the real link.

Once you’ve created your survey, you’ll want to test it to be sure it looks and behaves exactly how you need. Similarly, if you need to make changes after you’ve launched your survey and started collecting results, it’s important to understand what types of changes are acceptable and what types might not be best for your data collection.

• Minor edits may be safe to make.
• Major changes may affect data collection quality.

Visit the Testing/Editing Active Surveys help article for best practices in editing both unpublished and active surveys. 

Publishing controls when your changes go live. Instead of pushing edits instantly, you can:

• Moderate updates through version control
• Ensure quality before going live
• Restore or preview previous versions as needed

See the Survey Publishing & Versions help article for more information.

Qualtrics projects have 3 names:

• Project Name: The name that displays in Qualtrics.
• Survey Header: The name that can be displayed to respondents.
• Display Name: The name that appears on the survey browser tab.

You can change or update each of these at any time.

See the Renaming Your Survey help article for more information.

There are four methods of web distribution:

Anonymous Link

The anonymous link is the URL used to take your survey. You can distribute your survey by pasting this link into an email, onto a website, or into any mode of communication you use with your recipients. Anyone who clicks on the link will be able to take the survey.

It’s called the “anonymous” link because it does not collect identifying information such as name or email address, unless you specifically ask for it in the survey. However, by default, the anonymous link will collect the user’s IP Address and location data based on that IP Address.

See the Anonymous Link help article for more information.

QR Code

A QR code (or Quick Response Code) is a type of matrix barcode that can be printed or shown as an online graphic. QR codes store information—such as web address links—and can be read by mobile devices with a camera. With QR Codes, you can easily target your distribution to mobile device respondents.

Your survey’s QR code is linked to the Anonymous Link. When someone scans this code with a QR Reader app on their mobile device, they will be immediately directed to your survey. This is a convenient distribution option for receipts, posters, and other print media.

See the QR Code help article for more information.

Survey Director

The survey director creates conditional logic that redirects respondents to different surveys or websites from one central link.

See the Survey Director help article for more information.

Passing Information via Query Strings

A query string allows you to pass information to and from a website by simply adding, or “appending,” that information to the end of a URL. This information is stored in the query string and is captured by the website when it reads the URL.

Data can be passed into a survey using a query string. Once passed, the data can be saved as embedded data with the survey response. At the end of a survey, query strings can be used to pass data to another website or survey.

See the Passing Information via Query Strings help article for more information.

Qualtrics provides an easy and convenient way to distribute your survey to large groups of people via email. By using the Qualtrics mailer, you can send customized email invitations to your participants, track their progress, and prevent abuse of your survey.

See the Email Survey invitation help article for more information.

Email Distribution Management

Once you have emailed survey invitations through Qualtrics, you will see a block with your distribution information and actions you can perform on them. Here you can view your distribution details, send Reminder and Thank You emails, cancel or delete distributions, and download the distribution history. These different options allow you to manage your email distribution and monitor progress.

See the Email Distribution Management help article for more information.

Reminder & Thank you Emails

After you’ve invited respondents to take your survey, Qualtrics allows you to send special emails reminding these respondents to finish or thanking them for finishing. The system will recognize who’s finished for you, so you don’t have to worry about setting up a special contact list!

See the Reminder & Thank You Emails help article for more information.

Email Distribution Error Messages

Qualtrics has built in messages to let you know what you need to do to successfully send your emails. The described errors occur for survey invitations, Reminders, and Thank You emails.

See the Email Distribution Error Messages for more information.

Avoid Being Marked as Spam

When sending out any email distribution, one primary goal is to keep your emails from being blocked or directed to the junk folder of your recipients. Essentially, you don’t want your emails marked as spam. If you find that your emails from Qualtrics are consistently being marked as spam, there are a few things you can do.

See the Avoid Being Marked as Spam help article for more information.

Personal Links

For those cases where you need to use a third-party mail system to distribute survey invitations but also need to track which response belongs to which recipient, Qualtrics can generate a list of unique, or “personal,” survey links. These links are tied to specific survey recipients. Names and any other uploaded embedded data will be included with the responses in the results.

When you generate personal links, Qualtrics provides a spreadsheet that contains a row for each recipient including their name and their personal survey link. Most mailing systems can accept such a spreadsheet and will have a mail merge capability to include each recipient’s survey link in their email.

See the Personal Links help article for more information.

The Social Media section in the Distributions tab makes it easy to post your survey to social media websites. Qualtrics currently supports the following sites:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Reddit
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest

See the Social Media Distribution help article for more information.

Qualtrics SMS distributions help you reach your audience through mobile devices and collect on-the-go feedback. 

You can send surveys in two different ways through SMS: 

• 2-way interactive SMS: Respondents reply via text message.
• Link via SMS: A survey link is sent to be completed in a mobile browser.

See the SMS Distributions help article for guidance on how to set up an SMS survey distribution and best practices for conducting SMS surveys.

When you enter the Data & Analysis tab, you will land on the Recorded Responses page by default. Recorded responses contain all the responses recorded for your survey (that are not in progress), and includes all the data that can be displayed in reports or exported from the platform. From here, you can view and manage the data you’ve collected. 

• View all submitted responses
• Customize visible columns
• Download individual responses as PDFs
• Delete or export responses
• Track total number of recorded responses

See the Recorded Responses help article for information about navigating, viewing, deleting and exporting responses and more.

Sometimes, you will want to work with only a particular subset of your respondents’ data. Filters can be built using conditions such as:

• Demographics (e.g., age and gender)
• Time periods (e.g., last 3 months)
• Specific responses or embedded data

In fact, you can save your filter choices to be reused at a later time. 

See the Filtering Responses help article for more information.

Responses in progress are responses that have been started but not submitted. This includes both clicked links that have not been filled out and those that are partially filled out but not submitted.

Responses in progress become recorded responses when:

• It is submitted by the respondent
• It is manually closed by the survey owner
• The session expires

Manage in-progress responses by viewing, closing, or deleting them from the Responses in Progress page. 

See the Responses in Progress help article for more information.

You can export (another word for “download”) all of your participants’ responses to all the questions in your survey. When you export data from Qualtrics, you can save data to your computer for analysis in another software, share the file with a trusted colleague, or even import it back into another survey. Each row of the file is a different respondent, and each column is a question of the survey they answered, survey metadata (e.g. Recorded Date, IP Address, etc.), contact fields, and any embedded data you may have recorded for each respondent.

See the Exporting Response Data help article for more information.

You can import data in the Data & Analysis tab to:

• Merge data from identical surveys
• Update existing data
• Add data from external sources

See the Importing Responses help article for more information.

Retake links allow a respondent to reopen and edit a submitted survey. Use this when:

• A respondent requests to revise their answers
• An incomplete session was closed prematurely

See the Retake Survey Link help article for more information.

If necessary, you can combine response data from two surveys. The steps differ depending on whether you are combining data from two identical surveys or two dissimilar surveys (not recommended).

See the Combining Responses help article for more information.

Perhaps you’d like to remove profanity, spelling errors, or sensitive information from a respondent’s text entry. Maybe a respondent has told you they answered one or two questions incorrectly before they submitted their response. Response editing allows you to revise survey responses right inside the Data & Analysis tab. Qualtrics will even maintain the original data so you can revert back to the original responses any time.

See the Response Editing help article for more information.

Creating custom fields allows you to add new variables to responses after they’ve already been recorded. You can categorize based on items like age, dates, or certain answers to questions without having to set up Branch Logic and Embedded Data fields. You can also annotate responses or easily categorize text entry data.

See the Custom Field Creation help article for more information.

Even after your survey is deactivated or expires, respondents who began the survey before closure still have time to complete it. By default, incomplete responses are saved for 1 week after the respondent’s last activity. These settings can be changed by going to Survey Options < Responses < Incomplete Survey Responses.

For more information, please see the Incomplete Survey Responses help article.

Yes. However, if you’re emailing recipients at another organization with their own email servers, you’ll likely need to request that they whitelist Qualtrics to ensure your invitations don’t get marked as spam or blocked.

This usually happens when you copied a survey that had an expiration date set. The expiration date carries over with the copy. To fix this, go to Survey Options < Responses < Survey Availability and change the expiration date for when your survey closes.

Changes made to a live survey won’t go into effect until you re-publish the survey.

More information can be found on the Survey Publishing & Versions help article.

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