All Collections
Public | CONTACT
Text-compatible Question types for text surveys
Text-compatible Question types for text surveys

Text-friendly questions that work with text-enabled surveys

McKenzie avatar
Written by McKenzie
Updated over a week ago

Note: Text must be part of your PublicInput.com feature plan. Not all clients will have text features.

We offer many different question types, but not all questions are compatible with text surveys. Not every phone is a smartphone, and some phones only have T9 text options. For this reason, text survey questions need to be text-based only, not interactive or dependent on images.

For example, an interactive map question involves asking the participant to drop a pin or draw a line on a google map. Maps can't be received via text, so that makes this question type incompatible for a text survey.

Text-friendly survey questions include:

Select one option

Participants can respond with the number that corresponds to their answer choice.

Select multiple options

participants can respond with multiple numbers that correspond to their answer choices, e.g. 1, 3, 7.
Be sure to set the option limit if needed. If no limit, users can select 1, some, or all choices.

Question with correct answer*

works as a select one option question

Matrix Question (Likert Scale)

Each question will be asked one at a time, and provide your likert scale options as answer choices.

Comment/One-line comment

Allows participant to type an open-ended comment.

Zip Code

prompts participant to enter their 5-digit zip code

Contact information question

  • fields are customizable, and can include name, email, phone, zip, etc.

  • each field will be asked one at a time as the participant responds

Demographic Questions

Age, Gender, Race, Marital status, Education

Confirmation message

this question type is used to signal the end of a text survey, e.g. "Thanks for taking the survey"

Skip Logic (advanced)

Skip-logic will skip the participant over question(s) that aren't relevant to them.

*Question with correct answer will display as a text-friendly question, however, it will not notify the participant of which answer was correct in the text version of the survey. It will work as intended on the online survey, and highlight the correct answer if the wrong answer is chosen. If your survey is text only, it's best to use the select one option question format instead.

All text-friendly questions will be automatically enabled in your text survey on the Text tab of your project. Other question types (not listed above) will be hidden from your text survey, and won't be visible on the Text tab. If you notice you are missing some survey questions after you've enabled your text survey, it's OK! Don't panic. That just means some questions were disabled because they are not text-friendly.

Related articles:
How to enable a text survey

Did this answer your question?