Library Supported Technology: Organizing & Managing Questions

Blocks are a mechanism for organizing and grouping survey questions in Qualtrics. Grouping questions into block allows you to manage groups of questions more easily and enables you to employ survey logic (see subtab Optimizing Your Survey).

Every survey starts with the Default Question Block.

The number of blocks generally depends on the complexity of your survey. Simple surveys will need fewer blocks.

Below is an example of a survey with three blocks, each containing a number of questions. The blocks have been collapsed for easier viewing.

To add a new block, simply click on Add block below or above the current block.

To name the block, click the text in the upper-left corner and enter a new name.

There are two ways to add questions to a block:

1. Click Add new question
2. Click Import from library
3. Move questions from elsewhere in the survey via drag-and-drop or the Move question option in the action drop-down menu

For more detailed instructions and guidance on advanced randomization, please explore the Organizing and Managing Questions tutorial on the Customer Success Hub.

Randomization is an effective way to reduce response bias based on the order of questions and content in your survey. There are three ways to use randomization in a survey, detailed in the boxes below:

1. Randomize answer choices in a question
2. Randomize questions within a block
3. Randomize multiple blocks (see tip for Advanced Randomization below)

Randomizing answer choices in a question is best practice for survey design.

To add answer choice randomization, click the Choice randomization option under Question behavior in the left-side editing panel (scroll down).

There are five types of randomization to chose from via a popup screen:

1. No Randomization: default setting
2. Display answers in random order: this will randomize all the answer choices in the question
3. Present only [#] of total choices: this option displays a random selection of your answer choices
4. Randomly flip the order of choices: this will randomly reverse the order of your answer choices
5. Advanced randomization: this option allows you to be even more specific about randomization behavior. For example, you could chose to always display None of the above at the bottom of your answer choices while randomizing the rest.

This setting is especially useful when you present several related questions one after another. However, question randomization is generally not best practice for all survey questions -- only similar and/or grouped questions should be randomized.

To use question randomization:

1. Add a block to your survey.
2. Build or move the questions you want to randomize into the block.
3. Select Question randomization under Block behavior in the left-side editing panel.

There are four types of randomization you can use for questions:

1. No randomization: default setting
2. Randomize the order of all questions: randomize every question in the block
3. Present only [#] of total questions: this option will display a random selection of questions
4. Advanced randomization: this allows you to create more specific randomization behavior (e.g., always display a certain question last while randomizing all others).