Email: bos-support@bristol.ac.uk

Telephone: 0117 331 4377

How to create a survey

We hope you find the BOS system quick to learn and self-explanatory. These notes do not cover all the features of the system and you are encouraged to experiment with creating surveys - remember there is no limit on how many you create.

If at any point you need further guidance please search the support site using the search box, email us at bos-support@bristol.ac.uk or phone 0117 331 4377.

Thinking about your survey questions

It is always best to make surveys as short as you can. In considering questions ask yourself the following:

  • What am I trying to find out and does this question help?
  • Who is my intended audience and is this question relevant
  • Is the information returned useful or is it just "nice to know"? The crucial test of this may be to think "Can I act on, or do anything with, the information returned"?
  • Should a question be mandatory or optional?
  • If it is mandatory question, can everyone answer it? You might need to add an option such as "Not Applicable", "Don't Know", and so on.
  • Are the possible responses to your questions consistent? i.e. don't mix possible responses such as "Very good", "good", "Not very helpful", "Not at all helpful" Have I ensured consistency in use of upper and lower-case i.e. Do not have as a response "Very good", "Good", "Not Very Good", "Not good"
  • Have I avoided an odd number of possible responses to a question? (people will tend to pick the middle one)

Creating a new survey

  1. From http://www.survey.bristol.ac.uk login using your username and password (note that these are case-sensitive). This will take you to the Admin Home page.
  2. Click on Create Survey in the navigation bar at the top of the screen
    1. In the text box entitled "Survey Title" enter a name for your survey
    2. In the "Template" text box chose the name of an existing survey. As a minimum you should use the survey called "BOS Templates: Simple survey template".
    3. Give the survey a "Short name" - this is the name that appears at the end of the web address for the survey
    4. If known, enter Open and Close dates and times for the survey in the boxes provided. Please note, after the closing date no respondents will be able to submit their responses. This includes anyone part way through a survey at that time or anyone who opted to 'Finish later' but did not return to complete their response before the closing date.
    5. Click on the "Create" button - survey creation may take a few moments
  3. After the survey is created it will be listed in alphabetical order under My Surveys. Click on the word 'edit', or the icon depicting a pencil and paper next to the survey.
  4. You will see the survey split down its constituent pages. All surveys consist of a series of components one within the others - the survey contains pages, pages contain sections, sections questions, and questions may have follow-on questions.
  5. If you were to amend the text that appears on the Welcome page(Page 1) of the survey:
    1. Click on the "Edit" button.
    2. Change the text as required.
    3. Press "Save Changes" when complete
  6. Important things to note:
    1. All surveys must have an opening (Welcome) page, at least one page which contains questions and a final (Thank You) page with no questions.
    2. Respondents do not have to click on any "submit" button. They just click on "continue" and answers are auto-submitted when the "Thank You" page is reached. It is good practice to include text on your pages to tell respondents this.

Adding your own questions

  1. If you have worked through the instructions above then you should already be editing survey pages. If not, then click on My Surveys and then click on the word 'edit', or the icon showing a picture of a pencil and paper next to the survey.
  2. Go to the page where you want to add questions, click on "Edit".
  3. Amend the page title and page text as required. Page text can be removed if required. Click on "Save Changes" when complete. This will return you to the main edit page.
  4. Again click on "Edit".
  5. Scroll down the page and if you want to change a Section title, click on "edit" and follow on-screen instructions.
  6. Delete any questions you no longer require.
  7. To add a question click on the "Add Question" question button.
  8. There are six types of questions that can be created:
    1. Selection List - this is for questions that provide survey users with a predefined list of possible options from which to choose a single answer e.g. "Pick a capital city from the following list" - London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle. In general you use Selection List when you have quite a long list of options - more than 5 might be a good rule of thumb.
    2. Multiple Choice - this might be for a simple "Yes" or "No" or where the answers might be something like "Very helpful", "Helpful", "Not very helpful"
    3. Multiple Answer - use this question type so that a user can tick all answers that apply e.g. Which of the following newspapers do you read during the year
    4. Single Line - free text answer, one line only
    5. Multiple Lines - free text answer, multiple lines
    6. Date - useful for "What day did you attend the training course" type questions. Permitted data ranges can be set.
  9. Once you have chosen the question type click on the "Add" button.
  10. Follow the on-screen guidance notes for creating the question. Remember, feel free to experiment - it is easy to edit or delete the question after set-up.
  11. Mandatory or Optional - By default all questions will be optional. Setting a question to Mandatory will force survey users to complete the question. If you make a question mandatory think carefully to ensure that all survey users will be able to answer the question. Do you need a "Not applicable" or "Other" option?
  12. Press the "Save changes" or "Save & Continue" button when you have set-up your question. It is important to save changes before adding any follow-on questions.

Adding Follow-on questions

(Please note: you can't add a follow-on to questions in a grid)

It is possible to add questions within questions. These follow-on questions can be made to be dependent on the answer to the main question. e.g. A main question of "Do you like Mondays" with a Yes/No answer option might be followed by "If No, then why". Validation rules within BOS will then check that a user has completed the follow-on question.

  1. Within the main question scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on the "Add Follow-on question" button. (Make sure you have saved the main question first).
  2. Follow exactly the same steps as creating the main question with one additional feature?
  3. You can make the follow-on question mandatory conditional on the answer to the main question. If the main question is a Multiple Choice or Selection List type question where only one answer can be chosen then you can force the follow-on to be mandatory according to the chosen option.
  4. You can also add a further follow-on question to a follow-on. However, just be aware that too many "nested" questions can be confusing when completing a survey.

Adding further pages

If necessary you can further pages to the survey by clicking on the "Add Page" button in the main edit page.

Launching the Survey

  1. Before going to launch your survey you need to amend some survey "Options". To do this click on the "Options" from within the My Surveys page:
    1. Enter a number where it says "Expected maximum number of survey respondents". This is the highest number you expect could complete your survey. You can change this number at any time.
    2. If you have already entered Open and Close dates when you first created the survey then all you need to do is click on "Save" at the bottom of the screen (other options can be ignored for now). Please note, after the closing date no respondents will be able to submit their responses. This includes those that are part way through a survey at that time or anyone who opted to 'Finish later' but did not return to complete their response before the closing date. You can re-open or extend the survey by changing the close date at any time.
    3. "Question display options" - you may want to stop the text "(Optional)" appearing automatically after all questions. Tick or untick the box depending on what you want.
  2. From My Surveys click on "Launch". Confirm you have taken all steps by ticking the box and click on launch.
  3. A confirmation page will appear to tell you that your survey is now ready. The page will include the web address (URL) for your survey.
  4. We strongly encourage survey authors to pilot surveys before launching a final version.

Viewing results

Having launched your survey you can view results by logging in to BOS. The results for your survey can be found in the reporting area, this is accessed by selecting the "clipboard and graph" icon in the corresponding row for your survey on your "My Surveys" page.

You do not need to wait until your survey has closed to view your results and can view them as they are collected.