You can add an image or an MP3 audio file, or embed a YouTube video. In fact you can embed all kinds of online media using the appropriate HTML embed code.

What you can’t do is use multimedia as the answer options (e.g. click on the image that most closely resembles the tidyness of your desk) but there are work-arounds.

For example, an audio clip could have five short clips, introduced as A,B, C, D and E (you could quickly edit this together in Audacity) and then the question could be “Which of these five short phrases quotes do you think sounds the most sincere?”

Or you could use an image editor to assemble four images and add labels to identify each:

Q: Which of these fungi are deadly poisonous? (Choose one or more)
0 A
0 B
0 C
0 D

To do this firstly create your question and add the question text e.g. ‘how do you rate our service?’

Once this has been created you should then see an ‘Add new response option’  link.

This will open a popup window where you can then type your options.

Quick tip : You can add multiple options quickly by separating each one in the text box by a carriage return e.g.

1
2
3
4
5

would produce a scale between 1 and 5.

1. Go the page on youtube page of the video you want to include.
2. Look for the ‘share’ button under the video
3. Click the ‘Embed’ link that appears
4. Tick the following options of the list that appears
   – Use HTTPS
   – Use old embed code
5. Copy  the code in the box that appears. It will look something like this:

   <object width=”560″ height=”315″><param name=”movie” value=”https://www.youtube.com/v/G0k3kHtyoqc?version=3&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;rel=0″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”https://www.youtube.com/v/G0k3kHtyoqc?version=3&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;rel=0″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”560″ height=”315″ allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”></embed></object>

6. Go to iSurvey and edit the question you want to add the you tube video to and click the ‘Multimedia’ tab
7. Paste the you tube embed code you copied earlier into the ‘You Tube’ space
8. Update your question

There are two ways of doing this.

Option 1. By appending the survey web address

This is best used if you have a single individual you want to send to. How to do this.

a) Get the ID number of the question you want to pre-populate.
You can find this by going to the question and editing it. Look in the URL and you will see the question ID. In the example below the question ID is 149739

b) Change the survey URL and append the question ID and response
Your survey URL will be something like this. www.isurvey.soton.ac.uk/MYSURVEYID where MYSURVEYID is the ID of your survey. Change this to the following:
www.isurvey.soton.ac.uk/start.php?id=MYSURVEYID
Check that works! If it looks ok,  append the URL with the following
‘&qid149739=My Response’
Where 149739 is THE ID NUMBER OF YOUR QUESTION.

The finished URL should look like this:
https://www.isurvey.soton.ac.uk/start.php?id=3271&qid149739=My Response

where id=3271 is your survey ID,  149739 is your question ID and ‘My Response’ is the text you wish to pre-populate the question.

Option 2 : Use the ‘Custom Data’ option in the Invitation Lists

Invitation lists let you send out emails to multiple participants at once by uploading a CSV containing their name and emails.

By populating the ‘Custom Data’ field you can pre-populate any question you wish with bespoke text for each participant.
The CSV file has the format:
Email Address, First Name, Last Name, Custom Data

The example below will pre-populate question ID 149739 with the text ‘AC345G’
johnsmith@soton.ac.uk, John, Smith, qid149739=AC345G

You can pre-populate many questions at once by adding a new question ID (qid) separated by ‘&’
e.g.  johnsmith@soton.ac.uk, John, Smith, qid149739=AC345G&qid149740=Male&qid149742=single

A side-effect of this is that if question information (or any information entered using a formatted text box) is ‘dodgy’ the system will refuse to duplicate the question, section or survey.

The FIRST thing to try is to simply to ‘edit’ the question that is not copying properly. When you are on the edit page, simply click the ‘Update’ question’ button. This may fix the problem. If so do this for any other questions that are causing problems.

99% of all other problems have been caused by copying and pasting from Microsoft word WITHOUT using the ‘Paste from word‘ option. If you have recently tried to copy a question, or copy a survey and have had missing questions, or the survey has refused to copy at all, this will be the reason.

How to cure this problem
1. Locate the question with the invalid markup code (usually its the one question that hasn’t copied), and click ‘edit’.
2. Copy and paste the entire question text
3. Delete the contents of the text box entirely
4. Click the ‘Paste from word icon’  or the ‘Paste as plain text icon’  

If you require any help locating the ‘dodgy’ text in your surveys then please contact alexfurr@soton.ac.uk

There is also no limit to the number of sections or questions in iSurvey.

The countdown timer (which can be shown or hidden) can do one of the following:

1. Simply display a countdown timer on the page
2. Automatically progress to the next page when the countdown has elapsed
3. Prevent page progression until the countdown has elapsed

This allows you to create some more complex questionnaires.

Example 1 : Create an image slideshow
Some questionnaire require participants to view a set of images in a sequence (random or otherwise) and then ask questions about the image set. e.g. How did they make you feel?

You can do this in the following manner:

1. Add an image to each question in a section.
2. Add a time to each question for ‘x’ seconds
3. Choose the ‘auto progress to next page’ option
4. Set the section to show 1 question per page

This will then create a slideshow which presents each image to the participants for ‘x’ seconds before moving on automatically to the next one. You can randomise the images by picking the relevant option in the section settings.

Example 2 : Force participant reflection for ‘x’ minutes
If you wish participants to reflect on a piece of information / image / situation etc.. for ‘x’ minutes, you can use the ‘Prevent page progression’ timer option to do this. The ‘next page’ option is then removed until the timer has elapsed.



This allows you to increase / decrease font sizes / colours / font family as well as adding  tables and links etc…

Don’t forget you can add mp3s and images to each question as well.

Finally, please note that questions WITHIN a matrix block cannot have formatting applied to them as this would likely disrupt the matrix table layout.

A typical example of this is shown below

Normal 0 false false false 72 544×376 Normal 0 false false false What is your age?

The additional ‘Normal false false…’ etc… is redundant code imported from Word.

How do I fix it?
To remove the junk text simply do the following:

1. Select all the text in your question

2. CUT the text out

3. Use the ‘Paste from word’ option icon on the text toolbar to re-paste. It looks like this >>> 

That should fix the problem.

If you do not care about formatting your questions at all, it is highly recommend you use the ‘Paste as plain text’ option which looks like this >> 

Each question you create allows you to upload an optional image and optional mp3 file.

Text Response Question Types

Short Text Response
Long  Text Response
Multiple Text Response

Single Response Question Types

Single Questions
– Radio button style
– Drop down box style
– Slider Style

Multiple Questions (Matrix)
– Radio button style
– Drop down box style

Multiple Response Question Types

Single Questions
– Checkbox style

Mutiple Questions (Matrix)
– Checkbox style

Additional question types

– Ranking type questions
– Date picker
– Ethnicity Question Types (pre-made)
– Stimulus only