Survey Design 3: Sections

Begin designing the content of the survey by creating a Section. Every Survey contains at least one Section, which controls how questions are grouped and displayed.

Section Options

• Notes (optional) … this is for internal use only (maybe a note to yourself about why you formatted it a certain way).
• Instructions (optional) …this text will be shown to the user if there is a choice of targets.
• Format … The three ways to organize questions within a section are:
  • Only one target … This format lets you answer questions about a single person or object.
    • This includes self-surveys, or surveys about a single individual such as an Instance instructor.
    • An example of an object as the single target is an “End of Instance Critique” where the subject of the survey is the Instance.
    • Target….select your single target from the list provided.
  • Multiple targets, one at a time … This format lets you ask questions about multiple people or objects one after the others.
    • Targets … select one or more items from this list (Roles, Individuals, Objects, or Roles as Objects).
    • Additional options to filter targets by Group and/or 360 relationships are also available.[See 360 Relationships]
    • For example, if you selected everyone in a specific Role as the target, then the survey taker would answer all the questions on the first person in that Role. When they have completed answering all the questions on the first person, they will be able to start the survey again to begin answering the same questions about another person.
  • Multiple targets on the same page … This format lets you ask questions about multiple people all on the same page.
    • Target Type … Select either Role or Group, and then specify which one from the Role/Group dropdown that appears below.
    • People Filter … the list of targets can be further filtered based on the value of a selected variable. For example, maybe only people who scored above 80 on a fitness test should be evaluated.
    • Let’s say you selected 20 people as the targets and then you created five different questions. The survey taker would be presented with the first question repeated 20 times on the same page. Each of these questions would be associated to one of the targets. After all 20 answers were made for the first question, the survey taker would then be presented with the next question which would need to be answered 20 times, one per target. This would continue until all questions were answered 20 times.
• Allow target override …Allows survey administrators to override section target selection. 
• Copy evaluations to assigned people for Role/Team objects … When checked, evaluations made on a Role or Team object will also be saved as evaluations for each person assigned to the Role or Team.
• Allow questions to be selectable (Beta) … Allows users to select which questions they would like to answer when taking the survey.
  • Required questions are always selected by default, but other questions may be unselected.
  • This option is available at the section level and when enabled you may only have one section per survey.
• Allow question randomization … Displays all the items within this section in a random order (with the exception of page breaks). Items can opt out individually so their relative position in the section will remain the same. 
• Column Count … Allows for multi-column surveys (web only). (If set to more than 1, each question will have a Column Span option).
• Position … determines the order of the sections in the survey.

Sections and Document Layout

• Once you save/update a section, you can always return to the section options by clicking on the gear icon in the upper left corner of the section.
• A summary of the section position (section order), format type and targets will be displayed towards the top of each section.
• Click “+ Add New Section” to create a new section.
• Each section acts as a page break for the person completing the survey, and also provides a way to organize and present questions about multiple targets in a single survey. For example, one section can contain questions only about Running Backs, and the next section can contain questions about the entire team.
• Headers can be displayed. Enter the text of the header and select the size. Additional options include:
  • Sub Text … Smaller text that can be displayed below the header.
  • Image … Click on the image box to upload a static image to be included in the header. The size and shape can be adjusted, as well as the alignment. You can then ask questions about the image (e.g. a chart of data).
  • Display on mobile app … Choose whether or not the header should be displayed when the survey is completed using the mobile app.
• Page breaks can also be inserted within Sections, by dropping the Page Break item in the appropriate location.
• Pre-Questions are also presented on their own page. [see Survey Pre-Questions]

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Version(s): GideonSoft 2023 Release 1 and later