Choice Questions

Multiple Choice questions, Single Select and Multiple Select, are the foundation of most surveys: screening, attributes, brand lists, and yes/no paths. Both types support rich answer text, images, display logic, skip logic, piping, and carry forward.

When a list gets too long to scroll comfortably, switch its Display Type to Searchable Dropdown instead of adding a different question. Respondents type a few letters and the list narrows to the matches. See "Display Type: Buttons, Dropdown, or Searchable Dropdown" below.

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Switching between Single Select and Multiple Select#

In the builder, Single Select and Multiple Select are one question called Multiple Choice. Add it from the Standard group: clicking the card adds a Single Select question, and the ▾ menu on the card adds Single Select, Multiple Select, or With info icons directly. That ▾ button is tooltipped Choose a Multiple Choice type, and opening it adds nothing on its own: clicking it neither adds a question nor starts a drag, so you can read the three entries and close the menu again.

Clicking the card, or picking an entry from its ▾ menu, adds the question to the selected section, not just an open one. With nothing selected, nothing is added and the builder says Please select a section to add the question to. Select the section first, or select any question already in it, which counts as selecting that section. Dragging the card is the exception: it lands wherever you drop it, so nothing has to be selected first.

To change an existing question, open its Settings tab and use Selection Type. After you confirm, the question is replaced by the other kind, with a new question number:

• Its text, answer options and settings carry over.
• Display logic, skip logic, piping, quotas and carry forward that used it move to the new question.
• The confirmation warns that the switch could impact your data if the survey has already collected responses. Answers already collected stay saved with the original question and are never re-read as a different kind of answer. As with deleting a question, those answers no longer appear in HM Admin results once the survey is published again. If no responses have been collected yet, nothing is lost.
• Switching to Single Select warns you if a rule requires several choices to be selected at once, because a single answer can never match it.
• Comments on the question stay with the original question.

A question with info icons is its own interface and cannot be switched to or from plain Multiple Choice.

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Single Select#

Full guide: Single Choice →

Respondents pick exactly one option from a list (radio buttons).

When to use it:

• Yes/No questions.
• Screening questions where only one answer applies.
• Any time you need a single best answer.

Configuration tips#

• Use the properties panel to add, reorder, or recode answer options.
• Answer Columns (Settings tab) lays the options out in up to 4 columns, set separately for desktop and mobile. Once either is above 1, a Fill Order toggle appears: Left/Right fills across each row (A, B on the first row; C, D on the second) and Top/Bottom fills down each column (A, B in the first column; C, D in the second). Left/Right is the default, and the choice applies whether or not answer randomization is on.
• Apply display logic when the question should only appear for some respondents.
• To show a single choice only to some respondents, choose Add choice logic (or Edit choice logic) in that choice's ⋯ menu: it opens the Choice logic window on that choice. Remove choice logic in the same menu takes the rule off. A choice with logic shows a small blue filter badge beside its label, amber when its rule needs attention, and the line under the question ends with, for example, · 2 need attention. To read, edit, fill down or check the rules on many choices at once, click Choice logic above the choices. A choice that is only a picture is named in the window by its image's alt text, so give such images alt text. The window opens the same way from the Flow tab, works from the keyboard, stays quick with hundreds of choices, and opens view-only while a teammate is editing the question. See Display logic on choices, items, rows and columns.
• Use skip logic to branch based on the selected option.
• Piping can insert the selected label into later question text.

Logic support#

The operator list for a choice question offers Is Selected (Any), Is Selected (All), Is Not Selected (Any) and Is Not Selected (All), in that order. Is Answered, Is Not Answered, Is Displayed and Is Not Displayed sit in a Conditions group inside the choice dropdown, the one that otherwise lists the question's own options, rather than in the operator list. See Logic, Flow & Conditions for the full operator tables.

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Multiple Select#

Full guide: Multiple Choice →

Respondents can select one or more options (checkboxes).

When to use it:

• Questions where more than one answer can be true at once.
• Multi-select attribute lists.
• Any time respondents may have more than one answer.

Configuration tips#

• Selection Limits on the Validation tab sets Minimum Selections and Maximum Selections. A minimum of 0 means no minimum, and neither number can exceed the count of options on the question.
• Rich text and images work on individual options, same as Single Select.
• Answer Columns (Settings tab) lays the options out in up to 4 columns, set separately for desktop and mobile. Once either is above 1, a Fill Order toggle appears: Left/Right fills across each row (A, B on the first row; C, D on the second) and Top/Bottom fills down each column (A, B in the first column; C, D in the second). Left/Right is the default, and the choice applies whether or not answer randomization is on.

Logic support#

Multiple Select uses the same four operators as Single Select. With the choices you pick in the condition:

• Is Selected (Any): at least one of them was selected.
• Is Selected (All): every one of them was selected.
• Is Not Selected (Any): at least one of them was not selected.
• Is Not Selected (All): none of them was selected.

With a single choice picked, the Any and All versions mean the same thing. Conditions saved before the Any and All versions of Is Not Selected existed show as Is Not Selected (All) and work exactly as before. See Logic, Flow & Conditions.

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Laying the options out in columns#

Directly after Answers Display on the Settings tab, # of Columns on Desktop and # of Columns on Mobile set how many columns the option list is laid out in, separately for each. They are display only and change nothing about how the question behaves or exports.

Neither writes anything until you change it, so a question you have never touched keeps following the platform default rather than freezing today's value into the survey.

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Display Type: Buttons, Dropdown, or Searchable Dropdown#

Both Single Select and Multiple Select have a Display Type setting in the properties panel that changes how the option list is rendered to respondents. It does not change how the question behaves. Everything else in this guide (display logic, skip logic, piping, carry forward, randomization, recode values, exclusive options, "Other, please specify", and images) works exactly the same under all three Display Types.

• Buttons (default) is the familiar radio-button or checkbox list.
• Dropdown collapses the option list into a single closed box. Respondents click it to open a plain list, then pick; there is no text filter.
• Searchable Dropdown makes the same box double as a search field. Respondents type a few letters and the list narrows to the options that match.

When to use Dropdown or Searchable Dropdown: lists that are too long to scroll comfortably, such as a 64-condition cardiac screener, a country or state list, a drug or procedure list, or a full product catalogue. For short lists (a handful of options), stick with Buttons, because seeing every option at once is faster than opening a box.

How respondents use Searchable Dropdown#

• Click or tap the box to open the list. Nothing typed yet means the full list is shown.
• Start typing to filter. Matching is case-insensitive and looks anywhere inside the option, so typing atrial finds "Chronic Atrial Fibrillation". Options that start with what was typed are listed first, so the list jumps straight to that part of the list.
• The matched letters are shown in bold inside each option, so it is obvious why an option is in the list.
• If nothing matches, the list shows No matching options rather than sitting empty.
• Keyboard: ↑ / ↓ move through the list, Home / End jump to the first or last option, Enter picks the highlighted option (on Multiple Select it toggles the option and keeps the list open), Esc closes the list.
• Single Select: the selected option stays in the box, and a clear button beside it drops the selection so a different one can be chosen.
• Multiple Select: checked rows stay in the list as more are picked. The box shows the selected labels while there are one or two, then switches to a count such as "5 selected".

Configuration tips#

• Answer options are authored exactly the same regardless of Display Type. Add, reorder, recode, and rich-text them in the properties panel; the Display Type control is just another setting alongside them.
• Long lists are fastest to build with Bulk Edit (paste one option per line) or with the AI suggestions described in "Suggesting answer options with AI" below.
• In Bulk Edit, rows you copy from one question's bulk editor and paste into another's keep their bold, italic and underline. Rows pasted from Excel or Google Sheets come in as plain text. To select part of an option's text, click in it and Shift+click where the selection should end.
• Answer randomization, randomization groups, the exclusive option flag, and "Other, please specify" all carry over unchanged. Group headings appear in the unfiltered list and are hidden while a search is active.
• Options can come from a previous question with carry forward, and the question can feed carry forward, piping, and Section Loops in turn, the same as Buttons mode.
• Recode values control what is written to your export columns, unaffected by Display Type.
• Switching Display Type does not change the stored answer, so you can flip between Buttons, Dropdown, and Searchable Dropdown without losing or reshaping existing responses.
• Answer Columns and Fill Order only apply to Buttons. Dropdown and Searchable Dropdown always render a single box.

Logic support#

Display Type does not change condition operators. Single Select and Multiple Select use the same operators listed above regardless of which Display Type is active. See Logic, Flow & Conditions for the full operator tables.

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Suggesting answer options with AI#

When you know the question but not the whole list, you can ask AI for option labels and add them to the list you already have. It writes plain option text only: no images, no recode values, no logic.

To reach it: select the question, then look at the right-hand end of the Answer Options heading. The first icon there is a lightbulb, and hovering it shows Ask AI to suggest answers for this question. Clicking it opens the Suggest answer options dialog.

What you can set#

Your current option text is sent along with the question, so the suggestions are meant to sit alongside what you already wrote rather than repeat it.

Running it#

1. Set the count and the answer length, and decide whether to tick Replace existing options.
2. Click Suggest. While it works the button reads Suggesting… and Generating suggestions… appears under the settings. Every setting in the dialog is locked until it finishes; Cancel stays available.
3. If you left Replace existing options off, the new options are appended and the dialog closes.
4. If you ticked it and the question already has options, the Replace existing options? window opens first. It names how many options will be removed and how many will take their place, and warns that it cannot be undone. Click Replace to go ahead, or Cancel to back out with your list untouched.

Cancel closes the dialog without changing anything.

Gotchas#

• Nothing is ever wiped by an empty result. If the suggestions all turn out to be duplicates of what you have, or none come back, your options stay exactly as they were.
• Duplicates are dropped when appending. A suggestion whose text matches an existing option, ignoring capitalisation, is skipped rather than added a second time.
• If the AI returns nothing at all the dialog stays open and says No new suggestions were returned. Try adjusting your options and run again. Change the count or the answer length and run it again. If suggestions do come back but every one of them is a duplicate, the dialog closes as usual and your list is left as it was.
• Errors stay on screen rather than closing the dialog, so you can retry. You may see The suggestion service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again in a moment., The request took too long. Please try again., Too many requests right now. Please wait a moment and try again., or Something went wrong while generating suggestions. Please try again.
• Reopening the dialog starts fresh. The count, the answer length and the replace tick all go back to their defaults each time you open it.
• Suggestions are added just like typed options, so review the wording, then set recode values, exclusive flags, images and logic on them as usual.

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Adding an image to an answer option#

Any option can carry a picture beside its text, which is how you build image-led choice lists without moving to a different question type.

To reach it: on an option that has no picture yet, click the small image button at the right of the row, tooltipped Insert Graphic. The Insert Image window opens. If the option already has an image, the same window opens from the option's Edit button and is titled Update Image instead, with the current address already filled in.

Where the image can come from#

Select Image from Library#

This is the picker you land on from Link From Library, and the arrow at the top left takes you back to the source choices.

• Search images... filters by name. Press Enter or wait a moment and the grid narrows.
• The folder box beside it, placeholder All Images, limits the grid to one folder. It has its own Search folders... field and lists All Images and Unassigned above your own folders.
• Images are grouped under their folder name, with anything unfiled grouped as Unassigned.
• Click a picture to attach it and close the window.
• Load more appears when the folder holds more images than are shown. Cancel closes the picker without attaching anything.
• If the grid is empty it says so plainly, naming the search text or the folder it looked in.

Once an image is attached#

The option row shows a thumbnail with two links beside it:

• Edit reopens the picture window as Update Image so you can swap it.
• Remove takes the picture off the option and leaves the option text alone.

Clicking the thumbnail itself opens the picture full size in a window announced as Image Preview. It is a look, not an editor: close it and nothing has changed.

Gotchas#

• Images and text are independent. Removing a picture never removes the option, and an option with a picture still answers to the same logic, recode values and carry forward as any other.
• A pasted address has to be reachable by respondents. Intuify stores the address you gave and does not copy the file, so a link behind a login or on an internal server shows nothing in the live survey. Use Upload Image or Link From Library when you are not sure.
• A piped image is chosen per respondent, so what the option shows depends on the answer or variable it pipes from rather than on a fixed picture.

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Related guides#

• Question Types for the overview and when-to-use table
• Logic, Flow & Conditions for display logic, skip logic and choice operators
• Display Blocks & Plugins for Graphical Choice and other single-choice plugins