How to edit surveys

Learn how to edit surveys and the implications of doing so.

Chris Ramlow avatar
Written by Chris Ramlow
Updated over a week ago

Scenario

As an administrator, content owner, or presenter you have a PlusPlus survey that you'd like to change.

Solution

There are two different approaches to changing an existing survey:

Edit the survey

  1. Open the Dashboard from the profile menu in the upper-right corner.
    ​

  2. Select Surveys on the left.

  3. Open the context menu (three dots) for the survey you want to edit and select Edit.
    ​Edit Survey opens.

  4. Update the survey.
    Editing a survey has the same process as creating a survey. See How to create a survey for more instructions.

  5. Save the survey.

Duplicate and replace the survey

  1. Open the Dashboard from the profile menu in the upper-right corner.
    ​

  2. Select Surveys on the left.

  3. Open the context menu (three dots) for the survey you want to duplicate and select Duplicate.
    ​Create Survey opens.

  4. Change the Title to differentiate this survey from the original survey (for example, "My Survey 2.0").

  5. Update the survey.
    See How to create a survey for more instructions on updating the components of a survey.

  6. Save the survey.

  7. Update references to the original survey to use your new survey instead.

Go deeper

Which method fits my needs?

It may not be very obvious why would we recommend two different ways to update a survey. Why not always just edit a survey directly?

It all comes down to how you want to handle responses already submitted for your survey.

If you edit an existing survey, and you change the meaning of a question or a multiple-choice option, the old survey responses may not make sense in the context of the new wording. If your changes are extensive, it may be better to make a clean break with the old survey and start over. A new survey will also have fewer restrictions on the changes you can make to it.

On the other hand, if you duplicate an old survey in order to create a new one, you'll no longer be able to join the two sets of responses (old and new) within our platform. You will still be able to export each set separately, and then join them offline (for example, in a spreadsheet application).

Editing multiple choice options

When editing a survey, keep in mind that changes to options in single or multiple choice questions will not be applied retroactively. For example, say you have a question with the options "Yes" or "No", then you change these to "Agree" and "Disagree". All previously-received responses will still show up as "Yes"/"No", whereas new responses will show "Agree"/"Disagree". If you would like to merge "Yes"/"Agree" and "No"/"Disagree", you'll have to do this offline (for example, in a spreadsheet application).

Lastly, if a PlusPlus survey is edited at the event type or content parent level please note that it is not currently possible to propagate these changes to child content or events and updates to child content will need to be performed manually. The Survey Link option when editing an event type utilizing the Save & Apply option to propagate changes to child content is for 3rd party surveys only.

See also

For more on using and managing surveys, see:

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