How to build a survey in SurveyEngine

Before you can run a DCE you need a working survey. This tutorial covers every building block - from adding your first text block to formatting a complete questionnaire.

A complete walkthrough of SurveyEngine's survey builder covering text, images, all question types, page management, matrices, data labels and formatting.

Ben White, 08.07.2026

What you need to build a survey

A SurveyEngine Account

What you will learn

After completing this tutorial you will be able to add and format text and images, create every standard question type, manage page flow, build matrix questions, set data labels for analysis, and apply custom formatting.

These skills are the prerequisite for every other SurveyEngine tutorial. The choice experiment, best-worst, and advanced logic tutorials all build on the survey building fundamentals covered here.

TLDR Quick links

Try the live tutorial

Watch the video walkthrough

Open a free account

Step-by-step walkthrough

Step 1: Adding text. Use the rich text editor to add headings, paragraphs, bullet lists, and formatted text to any page. Text blocks support HTML formatting and can include inline images.

Step 2: Adding images. Upload images directly to a page or question. Images can be floated left or right alongside text, or displayed full-width. Supported formats include PNG, JPEG, GIF, and SVG.

Step 3: Adding questions. SurveyEngine supports all standard question types - single choice, multiple choice, open text, numeric, date, dropdown, and ranking. Each question has a data label used for export.

Step 4: Adding pages. A survey can have any number of pages. Pages have display labels shown in the editor and can be reordered by drag and drop. Use pages to group related questions and control respondent flow.

Step 5: Matrix questions. Matrix questions present multiple items in a grid with a shared response scale - useful for rating scales, agreement batteries, and attribute importance questions.

Step 6: Data labels. Every question and response option has a data label that appears in your exported data. Setting clear, consistent data labels before fieldwork saves significant time during analysis.

Step 7: Formatting. Apply custom CSS to control fonts, colours, spacing, and layout. SurveyEngine supports both global CSS applied to all pages and page-specific CSS for fine-grained control.

Try the live tutorial

The live tutorial is a working SurveyEngine survey demonstrating every element covered in this article. Click through it as a respondent to see the finished product, then download the ZIP file and upload it to your own account to examine the construction.

The tutorial ZIP contains the complete survey XML. Open any page in the editor to see exactly how each element was configured. This is the fastest way to learn the platform - read the documentation once, then reverse-engineer a working example.

Try the live tutorial now