Making a Questionnaire or Survey in Moodle
Turn editing on and under Add an Activity use the drop down list and click on Questionnaire.
Setting up the Questionnaire
• Name – name of the questionnaire and the link that will appear on the homepage
• Summary – you can provide a summary here but there is an option later to add instructions and information about the questionnaire. If you don’t want to put anything here put in two blank spaces to fool it.
• Timing – you can set the dates and times that the questionnaire is available.
Tick in the box next to Use Open Date and Use Close Date to enable you to change the date and time.
• Response options
o Type – decide if you want students to respond once or a number of times
o Respondent type – students can submit their answers anonymously or with their name
o Students can view ALL responses – you can limit student view of the responses to never, always, after answering the questionnaire, after the questionnaire is closed
o Save/Resume answers – If yes, students can start the questionnaire and come back and finish at a later date. This is a useful option for questionnaires with lots of questions.
o Submission grade – change to no grade or choose a grade
Questionnaire set up cont.
Content options
• Create new – tick for a first time questionnaire
• Copy existing – Tick if you want to use a previously created template for your questionnaire. You can edit an existing template but not use a template as a questionnaire.
• Use public – this will be addressed on the next screen
Common module settings – leave unchanged unless you want to use groups.
Save and display.
Click on the Advanced Settings tab
Content options
• Questionnaire Type
o Private – only available on the course where it was set up
o Public – allows questionnaire to be shared in multiple courses (cannot edit)
o Template – creates a template for a questionnaire that can be used (and edited) to create new questionnaires. This questionnaire is not used directly but stored for further use.
• Title – if title is not displayed from earlier setup include here
• Subtitle – This is a subtitle that appears under the title on the first page only
• Additional Info – Put any instructions or information about the questionnaire in this block. The information will appear at the top of the first page of the survey.
• Theme – This enables you to change the look of the questionnaire using different themes (colours and formats). Play around with the settings to find a theme you like.
Advanced settings cont.
Submission options
o Confirmation URL – sends students to a confirmation page on a website.
o Confirmation page and Body text – You can type in a title and some text you want to display as confirmation of students completing their questionnaire. If you leave this field empty, a default message will be displayed once students submit their questionnaire, it says “Thank you for completing this Questionnaire.”
o Email - Sends a copy of each submission to an email address (leave blank for no email backup).
Save Settings – on the next page…
Click Questions tab at top of the screen
Use the Questions drop down list to choose the type of question you want to use.
After you choose your question type, click on Add selected question type to add the question.
Include a Question name if you want to export the results of the survey to an Excel format.
You will be asked to choose whether an answer to the question is required or not.
Types of questions
• Yes/No – simple yes or no question.
• Text – Allows limited character text in a single line text area. Use the Input box length field to define the visible width of the text box and Maximum text length to determine the maximum number of characters allowed.
• Essay box – Allows essay type responses. Textarea columns determines the width of the box and Textarea rows determines the number of lines in the box.
Start with Textarea columns set at 90, and Textarea rows set at 7 and go from there.
• Radio buttons – Provides the user with a choice of options from which they can only pick one. Radio button alignment lets you choose how the question will appear. Put your question in the Question text box and your answers in Possible Answers. List your answers and if you want to include Other as an option put !other.
• Check boxes – Allows the user to select multiple answers from a list of options.
Min. forced responses and Max. forced responses require respondents to check that number of questions. You can set either a minimum or maximum number and leave the other set at 0.
• Dropdown box – users select one option from the drop-down list. Use !other to include an other option.
• Rate (scale 1…5) – allows users to rate statements on a scale of 1 to 5. You would normally use a scale of 3 to 5 options and the default value is 5 options.
Put your question in the Question text box (eg. Rate the textbook where 1 is very easy to understand and 5 is very difficult to understand) or your answers in Possible Answers (eg. 1=very easy, 2= easy etc.).
o Type of rate scale –
Normal (default value)
N / A columns – choose this is you want a not applicable column added to the rating scale.
No duplicate choices – choose this if you want to prevent
duplicate choices. For example, if you want a respondent to rank a number of items on a 1 to n scale and force each ranking to be unique or you want respondents to match items eg. colours (red, blue yellow) with a set of physiological responses (excitement, tranquillity, concentration) where one colour can only match one physiological response.
Osgood – semantic differential type of rating eg. -3, -2 -1, 0 - +1, +2, +3
Viewing Responses
If you click on a questionnaire on a course to which you have editing access, you receive the option to View ‘n’ responses in the top-right corner, where ‘n’ is the number of completed surveys. Clicking this will take you to the Survey Reports page which gives you a graphical and numerical breakdown of responses using both total and percentage results.
On this page you have the option to download the results to a text file. In the text file the fields are identified by the name you entered when creating them.
