A guide to every question type available when building surveys.
Last updated April 2026
When building a survey, choosing the right question type makes the difference between data you can act on and data that sits unused. Manager Toolkit offers ten question types, each suited to different kinds of feedback.
Available Question Types
5 Star Rating
A simple five-star scale. Best for quick satisfaction or quality ratings. Easy for respondents to answer and produces clean numerical data you can trend over time.
Likert Scale
A statement with an agree-disagree scale, from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Best for measuring attitudes and opinions. Useful when you want to understand how strongly people feel about a topic rather than just whether they agree.
NPS (Net Promoter Score)
A 0-10 scale asking how likely someone is to recommend something. Best for measuring overall satisfaction and loyalty. Responses are automatically grouped into detractors (0-6), passives (7-8), and promoters (9-10).
Emoji
Respondents choose Angry, Neutral, or Happy. Best for lightweight sentiment checks where a number feels too formal. Works well for pulse surveys and quick mood checks.
Yes & No
A binary choice rendered as tappable cards. Best for straightforward factual questions or when you need a clear split, for example "Have you completed the onboarding checklist?" or "Would you recommend this process to a colleague?".
Multiple Choice
Respondents select one option from a predefined list. Best for categorising responses or forcing a clear choice between alternatives. Keep the list concise and make sure the options are mutually exclusive.
Simple Text
A single-line free-text field. Best for short answers like a name, a quick comment, or a one-line suggestion.
Paragraph
A larger free-text area for long-form replies. Best when you want people to explain their reasoning in their own words or share extended feedback.
Email Address
A text field validated as an email. Best when you need contact details for follow-up alongside the rest of the responses.
Number
A numeric input. Best for capturing a specific number like a self-rated workload, an estimate, or a count that you want to chart.
Choosing the Right Type
The best surveys mix quantitative and qualitative questions. Use rating scales, Likert, and NPS questions to gather measurable data, then follow up with a Paragraph or Simple Text question to capture the reasoning behind the numbers. This gives you both the "what" and the "why".
Avoid using Paragraph questions for everything. While they produce rich feedback, they take more effort for respondents to complete and are harder to analyse at scale. Reserve them for the questions where open-ended detail is genuinely valuable, and prefer Simple Text when a single-line answer is enough.
If you are unsure which type to choose, ask yourself: "Do I need a number I can compare, or a story I can learn from?" Use ratings and scales for the former, Paragraph or Simple Text for the latter, and mix both in a single survey for the most complete picture.
