Survey structure

Introduction

This page describes the classic editor. In the classic editor, the sidebar of a survey has two tabs: Settings and Structure. When you open a survey, the Settings tab is selected. To see the structure of your survey, click the Structure tab:

The Structure tab lists the question groups of your survey. The number next to each group shows how many questions it contains. Click the arrow in front of a group to show its questions. Each question is shown with its question code in square brackets. Click a group or a question to open it.

At the top of the tab you find:

• Add question: Adds a new question. You need at least one question group first.
• Add group: Adds a new question group.
• Collapse all question groups and Expand all question groups: Hide or show the questions of all groups.
• Lock question organizer / Unlock question organizer (lock icon): Turns drag and drop in the Structure tab off or on, so you do not move a group or question by accident.

Add question and Add group are not available while the survey is active.

Each group and each question has an actions menu (...):

• Question groups: Move up, Move down, Check logic, Export and Delete group.
• Questions: Move up, Move down, Condition designer, Edit default answers, Export, Copy, Survey logic file (one entry per survey language) and Delete question.

Depending on the question type, the survey state and your permissions, some of these entries may be missing or disabled.

To renumber the codes of your questions and question groups, click Tools > Regenerate question codes in the survey toolbar and choose Straight or By question group. This option is only available while the survey is not active.

For more details about this function, see the Tools menu.

You can add question groups and questions from the Structure tab. To find out more about them, continue reading the next section.

The structure of a survey

A survey consists of questions and question groups that represent the backbone of a survey. Besides questions and question groups, a survey may also contain:

• the main and additional survey languages
• question attributes
• answers
• subquestions
• default answers
• conditions
• assessments
• quotas
• quota members
• quota language settings
• panel integration (URL parameters)
• survey-specific settings

Everything mentioned above is included in a .lsa and/or .lss file. These file types allow users to easily import and export surveys into/from their LimeSurvey installation.

Other items such as themes, survey participants tables, resources or label sets have to be exported and imported separately.

  Every question is attached to a question group. This means that in order to add questions to your survey, you need to add a question group first.

Question groups

Before you add questions to a survey, you need to create at least one question group. Then, all your new questions will be added to this question group.

To find out more about question groups, read our introduction on question groups.

Questions

Once you create a question group, you can start adding questions. To quickly check the question types that you can use in a survey, see Question types.

If you want to learn more about question fields, read our introduction on questions.

Reordering questions and question groups

You can only change the order of questions and question groups while the survey is not active.

In the Structure tab, drag a question group or a question by the handle (six dots) in front of its name and drop it at the new position. You can also drag a question into another question group. If you cannot drag anything, click the lock icon at the top of the tab to unlock the question organizer.

Alternatively, open the actions menu (...) of a group or question and click Move up or Move down.

  Questions are displayed in the order you set here. After reordering, check that questions used in conditions or expressions still come before the questions that depend on them.

For a larger view, use the Reorder tab of the Survey organizer: on the Settings tab, click Overview questions & groups and then Reorder. For more details, see Reorder questions and question groups.