Changing/deleting questions and question types once your onform is live

In this article we’re going to take a look at what happens when you change/delete a question or question type once your ONFORM is live and you already have responses.

Deleting a question

If you delete a question that already has responses then you still retain the responses, and they will be displayed at the bottom of the question list on the summary screen. Find out more about the responses screen here.

Changing a question

Let’s start with an example: you’ve created your ONFORM, you’ve sent emails out to prospective respondents and people are filling in your ONFORM and you’re getting really useful responses back – very exciting!

You then realise that there is a typo in one of your questions, instead of the question reading “Thinking ahead to next year, which of the following products do you think you will purchase?” it reads: “Thinking ahead to nect year, which of the following product do you think you will purchase?”

As you can see, there are two minor typos in the question, and you’ll be pleased to know that if you were to update the question then all of the data will still be linked to the question, so you can go ahead and correct the typos and you won’t lose any responses. On the summary screen, the amended question will display and on the responses screen, which lists each individual response, the respective question that was asked to the respondent will display.

And just to recap, if you change a question all of the responses received will still be linked to the question. Just bear in mind that if you are materially changing your question, for example, instead of asking “Thinking ahead to next year, which of the following products do you think you will purchase?” you change it to “Thinking back to last year, which of the following products did you purchase?” then you would more likely want to create a new question, and delete the old question, if it is no longer required, as the answers received for the old question wouldn’t be relevant to the new question.

Changing question type

If you change the question type then it will be treated as if it is a new question, the responses received when using the previous question type will still display, but will be linked to the old question. The old question will be treated as if it was deleted (see the deleting a question section above).