Who can use this feature?

Account administrators, Survey creators, Surveys full permissions, Survey admins

Available on:

Subscriptions with Engagement for Snapshot/Attributed, Unattributed/Ad-hoc, and Lifecycle/Continuous survey templates

Note: If your survey setup experience looks a little different, you may be using the legacy survey designer. See Edit a Survey for guidance.

The Survey Designer allows you to create, organize, and configure questions for your engagement surveys. Use it to build surveys that gather meaningful feedback from your employees.

Managing Survey Questions & Sections

Add a question

Add a new question to your survey when you want to gather specific feedback or measure engagement on a particular topic.

Navigate to Survey configuration > Questions.
Click Add.
Select New question.
Choose your question type:
- Rating scale - For questions using agreement, focus, or frequency scales
- Select - For multiple choice questions
- Free text - For open-ended written responses
- Demographic select - For questions tied to employee demographic data
Choose a section to assign the question to.
Enter your question text.
Configure question settings:
- Toggle Required if employees must answer this question to submit the survey.
- Confirm the Section where this question will appear.
Click Save.

Edit a question

Edit an existing question when you need to update the wording, change settings, or correct an error.

Navigate to Survey configuration > Questions.
Locate the question you want to edit.
Select the ellipsis to reveal the menu and choose Edit.
Make your changes to the question text or settings.
Click Save.

Note: If the survey is live, you must click Edit survey to unlock editing. Click Disable editing when finished to prevent accidental changes.

Import questions

Import questions from a previous survey or from a prepared file to speed up survey creation.

Navigate to Survey configuration > Questions.
Click the Import questions icon in the header.
Follow the question importer workflow to upload and map your questions.

Move a question

Move a question to reorganize your survey structure or group questions differently.

Navigate to Survey configuration > Questions.
Select the ellipsis next to the question to reveal the menu.
Choose Move to section for standard sections or Move to demographic section for demographic sections.
Select the target section from the list to confirm the move.

Note: Moving a question may affect any display rules that depend on question order.

Working with Sections

Add a section

Add a section to group related questions together and organize your survey structure.

Navigate to Survey configuration > Questions.
Click Add.
Select New section.
Enter a section title.
Add an optional description to provide context for employees.
Click Save.

Edit a section

Edit a section when you need to update its title or description.

Navigate to Survey configuration > Questions.
Select the section you want to edit.
Update the title or description.
Click Save.

Add a demographic section

Demographic sections collect self-reported information from employees that may not be available in your HRIS. They appear separately from standard sections at the bottom of the survey by default.

Navigate to Survey configuration > Questions.
Click Add.
Select New demographic section.
Enter a section title.
Add an optional description to provide context for employees.
Click Save.
Select the ellipsis next to the section and choose New demographic question.
Enter your question text.
Enter a Demographic label to define how this data will be categorized in your reports.
Click Add option to input your response choices.
Toggle Enable "Other" option if you want participants to write in a custom response.
Configure your question settings.
Click Save.

Demographic sections appear separately from standard sections in your survey.

Tip: We recommend moving demographic sections to the beginning of the survey by clicking Move to the Top.

Advanced Configurations & Settings

Understand question settings

Each question has settings that control its behavior:

Required - When enabled, employees must answer this question to submit the survey. Use sparingly to maintain high participation rates.
Section - Determines where this question appears in the survey structure.

Important considerations for Required questions:

Impact on participation: Making questions required can have an adverse impact on survey participation rates and response quality. Culture Amp typically advises against making questions required except in rare, specific use cases.
Participant Experience: Survey participants must provide answers to each required question to complete a survey. When a required question is left unanswered and a participant attempts to submit their survey, they will see a pop-up notice that they must answer any outstanding questions before proceeding.
Visual Alerts: Each unanswered required question will also be highlighted in red. Submission of the survey will not be possible if any required fields are left unanswered.

Configure rating scale types

When you create a rating scale question, you can choose from several scale types:

Agreement – Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree
Satisfaction – Very dissatisfied to Very satisfied
Quality – Very poor to Very good
Frequency (Default) – Never to Very frequently (standard intervals)
Frequency (Alternative) – Never to Always (absolute intervals)
Performance – Awfully to Superbly
Importance – Not at all important to Extremely important
Focus – Much less focus to Much more focus

Configure display rules

Display rules control whether a question is shown to employees based on their previous answers.

Demographic rule - Show or hide questions based on employee demographic data
Answer rule - Show or hide questions based on how employees answered a previous question

A warning displays if you edit a question that other questions depend on: "Changes may affect display rules."

You can configure display rules in the Rules section of the question designer.

Finalizing Your Survey

Preview your survey

Preview your survey to see how it will appear to employees before launching.

Navigate to Survey configuration > Questions.
Click the Preview survey eye icon in the header.
Review the survey flow and question presentation.

You can also copy the preview link to share the preview with stakeholders.

Export your survey

Export your survey design to share it with stakeholders.

Navigate to Survey configuration > Questions.
Click Export in the header.
Choose your export format:
- Acrobat (.pdf) - For sharing and reviewing
- Excel (.xlsx) - For editing and analysis
The file will download to your device.

Important Survey Status Behaviors

Your survey status affects what changes you can make:

Draft - Full editing is available. Make any changes needed before launching.
Scheduled - Survey is scheduled to launch at a future date. Make any changes needed before the scheduled launch.
Live - Survey is actively collecting responses. Click Edit survey to unlock editing, then click Disable editing when finished.
Closed - Survey has ended. Editing is locked. Click View report to see results.
Archived - Survey is archived for long-term storage.