Create a Questionnaire in Moodle

Use the Questionnaire tool when you want to create a survey for the purposes of data gathering. It is recommended to use it to obtain student feedback or opinion, rather than for assessments.

The Questionnaire tool allows you to create many different types of questions: you can ask students to respond with a date, a number, a short or long text answer; by ticking a check box, selecting a radio button or a Yes/No answer or an item from a dropdown list; or by rating something on a scale.

You cannot add images or media to a Questionnaire activity.

See the following page for a comparison of the Questionnaire, Choice and Feedback activities.

Step by step instructions

Create a questionnaire

You can create a Moodle questionnaire in 3 ways:

  • create a completely new questionnaire from scratch.
  • copy an existing questionnaire belonging to the course, or a "template" course, and change it to suit your purpose.
  • use an existing "public" questionnaire. You cannot edit a public questionnaire, or view responses to it - only the person who created it can edit these. 

These instructions will help you create a completely new questionnaire, to which you will add your own questions.

  1. On the course home page, click Turn editing on.
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  2. In the appropriate section, click Add an activity or resource, and from the pop-up menu, select Questionnaire.
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  3. On the Adding a new Questionnaire page, click Expand all then under the General section, enter a Name and if necessary, a Description.
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  4. Do you want the questionnaire to be available immediately and on an ongoing basis?
    • If yes, leave the Timing fields unchanged and continue to the next step.
    • If no, click the Use Open Date and Use Close Date check boxes and select dates, months, years, hours and minutes into the drop-down boxes to control the questionnaire's availability.
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  5. Select the Response options you want to give the respondents:
    • Type—Can students take the questionnaire once, or at regular intervals, or as many times as they want? 
    • Respondent Type—Will their names will be recorded with their answers?
    • Students can view—Will you permit them to see others' responses, and if so, under what conditions?
    • Save/Resume answers—Will you allow them to partially complete the questionnaire and return to it later?
    • Allow branching questions—Will the sequence of questions be different depending on respondents' answers?
    • Auto numbering—Will the questions and/or pages be auto numbered?
    • Submission grade—Will marks be awarded for completing the questionnaire, and if so, how many
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  6. Under Content options, select where you will source the questionnaire content from. You can
    • Create new—create a completely new questionnaire from scratch. (These instructions presume you select Create New.)
    • Copy existing—copy an existing one belonging to the course, or a "template" course, and change it to suit your purposes
    • Use public—use an existing "public" questionnaire. You cannot edit a public questionnaire, or view responses to it; only the person who created it can.
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  7. Complete the remainder of the page and click Save and Display.
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  8. On the new questionnaire's editing page, click Add questions.
  9. On the Manage questions page, select the Advanced settings tab.
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  10. On the Advanced settings page, under Content options:
    • Select which Questionnaire Type you are creating, Private, Public or Template. (These instructions presume you select Private.)
    • Add a Title to appear at the top of every page of the questionnaire (that is, if you want this to be different from the main name you entered at Step 2).
    • Specify any Subtitle or Additional information you want to display.
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  11. Under Submission options:
    • Enter the Confirmation details you want the user to see when they submit their answers.
    • Enter the Email address(es), if any, to which you want submissions to be forwarded.
    • Click Save and display.
  12. On the questionnaire editing page, click Add questions.
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  13. On the Manage questions page in the Add questions section, from the drop-down box select the appropriate question type, then click Add selected question type.
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  14. The page that displays will be different for each question type. This Moodle Docs page, "Editing Questionnaire questions" is a useful reference when you're completing the question creation page.
  15. Click Save changes when you have set up each question. The Manage questions page displays with all the created questions listed in the Manage questions section, where you can move, edit or delete them, or change whether a response is required for each one.

View responses (and respondents) to a questionnaire

To see who has and hasn't responded to a questionnaire, and to view respondents' answers:

  1. On the course home page, click the questionnaire's link.

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  2. On the questionnaire's home page, click View All Responses. This button only appears when there has been at least one response.

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  3. On the View All responses > Summary page, you can view a summary of all the responses. (To see individual responses, click the List of responses tab, then the respondent's name.)

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  4. To view users who have not yet taken the questionnaire, click the Non-respondents tab

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  5. On the Non-respondents page, to remind non-respondents to take the questionnaire, either select individual students using their check boxes in the Select column or scroll to the bottom of the list and click Select all.

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  6. Under Send message to selected users, enter a Subject and a Message body for your reminder message.

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  7. Click Send. A message-sent confirmation displays, and the questionnaire's home page re-displays.

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Moodle Docs resources