Deleting / Editing Questions / Answers in a live Survey - Implications and Issues

Yes, it is possible to edit the survey question(s) / answer(s) after the survey is live. You can change/re-word the text for question(s) / answer(s) by clicking on the Edit link for the concerned question under the Edit Survey page.

Yes, you can delete question(s) from a live Survey. Please note that deleting the Question will also delete all responses collected for that question. Once a Question is deleted the responses cannot be restored.

Yes, Question(s) can be added to a live survey. Data for that question will be collected only from the point onwards after which it was added to the Survey.

It is possible to delete / adjust answer options on a live survey however we strongly advice not to do so unless absolutely necessary. For example

  Q: Which city do you live in?

  New York
  Los Angeles
  Chicago
  Philadelphia
  

You have a live Survey with the above question and have already collected some data. In the database the data is scored according to the answer options position in the list. So responses will be stored with scores / weights as follows:

  New York will be recorded as 1
  Los Angeles will be recorded as 2
  Chicago will be recorded as 3
  and Philadelphia will be recorded as 4. 
  

Now if you add another option Phoenix at position two in the list. The Scoring for the rest of the options will change. So now the scores will be as follows:

  New York will be recorded as 1 (same as earlier)
  Phoenix will be recorded as 2 (new answer option added)
  Los Angeles will be recorded as 3 (earlier saved as 2)
  Chicago will be recorded as 4 (earlier saved as 3)
  and Philadelphia will be recorded as 5 (earlier saved as 4). 
  

So for a respondent who answered the survey before the changes were made and had answered Chicago as the city i.e. score 3 would now show up under Los Angeles. The data saved before the answer option was added will be useless for the above question. Therefore if absolutely necessary please add the answer option at the end of the list so that the earlier responses are not disturbed.

Similarly if an answer option is deleted from the middle of the list the scoring for the rest of the answer options is disturbed and the data that was saved prior to the changes were made will be inconsistent.

Please check if you have setup branching in the survey. If you have branching and you added / removed question(s) / answer(s) then you will need to setup the branching again and also setup page breaks appropriately for the survey to work correctly. Also if you were pointing to a question using branching and now that question has been deleted then you will need to update the branching accordingly.

Yes. However, re-ordering questions will affect the flow of the Survey. Therefore if you have branching in the Survey then the branching will need to be updated wherever necessary.

Reordering of questions and/or answer options will affect your collected data.