Comments/ Essay Boxes

What are Comments/ Essay Boxes?

Comment Box Question

Respondents can enter a determinable amount of text, in response to your set question or statement. They are designed to provide your participants with space to express their thoughts and comments or write a short essay-style answer to a question.

Why include a Comment Box/ Essay Box?

Comment/ Essay boxes allow respondents to form longer, open-ended responses. Therefore, they’re more suitable for questions that require a more detailed answer.

How do I create a Comment/ Essay Box?

  1. Open the Form tab
  2. Click 'New question'
  3. Select Comments/ Essay Box
  4. Enter your question

Default Settings

The text box will be set to manage four rows of text by default. You can increase, or decrease, the number of rows using the slider in the ‘Settings’ section of the Question Quick Menu. You can allow for between one and ten lines of text.

There will also be no ‘Input Limitation’ set by default, but this can be changed in the same menu as above.

Tips

  • These question types are great for providing agency to respondents, especially if they feel they have more to say. However, a large number of text boxes can be mentally taxing.
  • Your question should demand a straightforward answer, or participants will become confused.
  • Specify what type of information you need to be input into the box, e.g. if you’ve set the box to only accept email addresses, make respondents aware of this.

Question Settings Bar

Inside the Question Quick Menu for Comments/ Essay Boxes you will find several options:

  • Required: This option will appear as a box, which can be enabled or disabled. When enabled, it will force respondents to complete the question before they can finish the survey or quiz. When disabled, participants will be able to skip any question. By default, this setting will be inactive.
  • Personal info: When enabled, the data from any question marked as PII in the ‘question settings’ will be stored as a separate response. Allowing you to identify who has completed your survey, and at what time, without viewing the other answers they’ve given.
  • Numbered: This button toggles the numbering for the concerned question.
  • Text rows: Customize the size of the textbox, and therefore the amount of text a respondent can input.
  • Input Limitation: Control what type of information participants can input. Toggle between ‘None’ (no Input Limitation), ‘Numeric’ (only numbers can be input), ‘Email’ (only email addresses can be input), and ‘Web Address’ (only URLs can be input).
  • Link to contact field: Choose a custom field to link all responses for this question to.How respondents interact with Comment/ Essay boxes?

An empty text field will be present beneath your set question or statement. Respondents can fill this space with their answer or comment.

Note: Press SHIFT + ENTER to start a new line of text, and just ENTER when done.

How to analyze the Quick Report?

The responses for Comments/ Essay Boxes will be listed under ‘Text Responses’ in your Quick Report. They will be ordered from the newest response at the top of the list to the oldest response at the bottom. For more detailed instructions on analyzing your report, you can visit either of these articles:

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