I love the potential power of LimeSurvey, but the manual leaves a bit to be desired simply because explanations of the purposes of some of the features are not present with an emphasis rather on how to manipulate that feature.

Groups is an example. I reviewed the manual for groups, here:

manual.limesurvey.org/Surveys_-_introduction#Survey_groups

Yet nowhere in that explanation does it actually say what is the *purpose* of a group.

I created groups breaking them down and titling them in what I thought groups are, i.e., groups of questions for a specific topic.

Now I figured I would be able to use these groups in the survey. That is the group that I titled "coins" would be available to bring into a survey and then add questions to that "group". Likewise the group that I titled as "sports" would be available to bring into a survey then add questions to that "group".

I find out I couldn't do that, or for that matter, even use any of my defined groups in a survey.

All of this may be the wrong usage of groups, but without a clear definition of *what* groups are used we are left trying to figure it out on their own.


Of course the place someone goes to lookup the purpose is in the manual under the category heading of groups - but all I see there are explanation on how to manipulate them and control them but no explanation of why they exist or what they do.

As well, I am unable to actually activate any questions. On the left-side panel I see "survey menu". Beneath that I see "list questions" with the link to "add a new question". But nothing happens when I attempt to "add a new question"
with the help pop-up stating "you must first create a question group".

But as I stated above - I have question groups. Why can't I access them?

Thank you.

"Survey Groups" should be pretty selve explanatory. A group of surveys. It is there to structure your different types of groups. How you want to structure, this is up to you.

It is more to have a little bit of structure in your list of surveys, when you have a lot of surveys.

E.g. I currently have the following groups:
- General: All current surveys
- Sample: Surveys with examples of solutions / workarounds, which I might use in future surveys
- Tests: Tests from the Limesurvey forum
- Archive: Surveys that have been closed but i want to keep for archiving purposes

But others might have of course other approaches.

Basically a survey group is a form of category / tag to identify surveys that are in some way similar / belong to a certain group of surveys.

Not sure about your other problem, can you show a screenshot of what you are trying to do?

Thank you Holch - appraeciate the quick reply. I do see now that I must - or it appears I must - create groups to create questions within those groups. I could have been more clear - my mistake: can I create quesitons without groups?

I can't seem to be able to do that. My surveys are repetitive in nature - same questions over and over but to different groups of people, but it's not important to group them in anyway.

OK, you need to distinguish between "survey groups" and "question groups".

Survey groups are just a tag in the list os surveys that you have.

Question groups are totally different. Each survey needs to have at least 1 question group.

Questions can only reside within question groups. Question groups are here to structure your survey.

But as Limesurvey does not have a "page" concept, the survey groups are mainly used to create pages.

There are three cases on how to show the questions of your survey:

1. All in one: here you actually only need 1 group, but of course can use more groups to logically structure your survey. All questions will be shown on one page. Makes only sense if the survey is quite short, I think.
2. Question by question: In theory you also need a maximum of 1 group, each question will be on a separate page.
3. Group by group: The option that I personally use the most. All in one is mostly not that useful for my stuff. Question by question can be tedious sometimes, when there are many short questions, that could easily be on one page.
So I mainly put questions into groups that should be shown on the same page. Long matrix questions will be in their own page alone, questions like gender and age might be on one page.