If you have stumbled upon this article while searching how to make a poll in Google Forms, then you my friends are in for a ride. We all have been part of taking polls and giving our unsolicited opinions to the people. But have you ever created one for your business online or on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter?
There are various options available online to create polls. Majority of online poll maker tools you come across are developed with a vision to provide ease, efficacy, and efficiency in poll creation. And Google Forms app is one of them, you can create anything from surveys, polls, and assessments, to feedback.
Therefore, here we are going to just focus on how you can make polls in google forms. But before that, let’s go over some basic details on polls.
What is a Poll?
Polls can be defined as a survey or type of study (inquiry) conducted in an unbiased and scientific manner to know about the opinion of audiences concerning a particular situation or series of issues. Though polls are a sort of survey, there is a slight difference between the two.
When we talk about polls they are a way to understand and know people’s choices and what works for them. It can help you to measure the success of an event or an initiative and is carried out at different stages. On the other hand, surveys are more so a way to gather information from a set of samples, with an intent to generalize the results to a larger population. Besides, they require detailed and extensive feedback, unlike polls.
Google Forms surveys are one of the best ways to conduct online surveys just like google polls. Polls and surveys form a significant part of market research as crucial decisions are taken based on data collected directly from the users. Both have relevance in all industries due to their simplified analytics and ease of operations. One of the best and by far the most relevant example of polls is – Election Poll.
Different Types of Polls?
Polls have become a part of the everyday basis for businesses, today on social media it has become a trend or helpful way for creators/businesses to understand their audience’s opinions and work accordingly.
For example, on Instagram, we have a polls feature that you can use to ask the opinions of your followers. Or learn more about their perspective regarding it. Various online tools can help you to create online polls, one of them is google form poll. However, before we discuss how you can create a poll in Google Forms, here are some of the major types of polls you must know.
- Benchmark Polls: It is probably the first poll conducted in a campaign. Often, such types of polls are conducted even before the candidates have announced their nominations. But sometimes, it occurs immediately following the announcements with the motive of raising funds. Benchmark polls help in analyzing where the contestant stands compared to its competitors. It is generally a short & simple survey of likely voters.
- Tracking Polls: Like benchmark polls, tracking polls are used by political campaigns to gauge candidates’ success, office bids, etc. Tracking polls however can also be used by news organizations to depict their reports of campaigns. It occurs at fixed intervals generally averaged over a trailing window. Besides, weekly tracking polls use past data and discard the older ones.
- Bushfire: Similar to benchmark and tracking polls, the bushfire poll is also used for political campaigns. It is taken between benchmark and tracking polls, the competition and expenses on the campaign required to enhance reputation, image, and brand awareness determine number of bushfire polls. These polls are created with a focus on voters & are often lengthy covering questions.
- Push Poll: Unlike the previous three types, push poll is considered less a polling method and more an interactive marketing technique. It is designed with a motive to alter and influence the view of respondents (most commonly used in political campaigns). The goal of ‘push polls’ is to reach the masses, irrespective of their will, and is planned with inclined and suggestive questions ensuring respondents are pushed towards unfavorable responses benefitting pollsters candidates.
- Opinion Polls: As the name propose, the opinion poll is a survey of public opinions from a set of sample. The motive of such polls is to gather the opinion of a certain population by asking them questions related to a subject. Then deducing general responses in ratio or within confidence intervals.
- Entrance Poll: It is taken directly before voters cast their votes, usually, to understand voters’ opinions on voting & other electoral issues. As the possibility of differing from their original opinion is far less, the margin of error in the entrance poll is less than in an opinion poll.
- Opposite of the Entrance poll is the Exit Poll – It is taken immediately after the voters’ exit polling stations. It is conducted to gauge the winning candidate’s way before the votes are counted.
Steps to make a poll in Google Forms
If you want to create a Google poll, create either a single question or set of questions that are used to predict or learn what people believe, how they feel about something, and/or in what way they will act.
Here’s how you can create a free poll in google forms in three easy steps:
Setup Google Form
To start with, we will first have to set up the Google Form. For that, sign in or sign up to your Google account and go through G-drive. Or you can directly go to Google Form, and select ‘Blank Form.’
Once you’ve done that if you want you can configure the settings of the form in the ‘Settings’ option. Like customize confirmation messages, polls are generally anonymous so you can keep the email id option disabled, and you can limit responses.
Apart from that, you can customize your google form for polls (though it can be done after you’ve created the poll). If you want to change the style of Google Forms, navigate to ‘Customize Theme’ on the top navigation bar, you will see a dialog box of ‘Theme options.’ From there change the background color, font style, add header image, and theme color to make it more brand appealing.
Furthermore, in polls, if you want to bifurcate each response and want them in one place. Then, go to ‘Responses’ at the top bar and click on the ‘Spreadsheet’ icon and create. A google sheet will be formed and the form will be linked to it. Apart from that, you can select from previously created sheets by tapping on the ‘select response destination’ through the ‘፧’ menu option in ‘Responses’.
Create a Poll
Once you’ve set up your google forms for the poll, it’s time to create the poll. It means, that it’s time to create questions for your polling. To start with, you first have to smartly choose your Q&A type, whether yes/no, multiple choice, single choice, or text box. For example:
- What new marketing channels should we experiment with? (Open-ended),
- Which do you identify the most with politically? (single choice)
- How likely are you to vote in upcoming elections?
Write down the title and description of the polling to introduce yourself and the purpose of this polling. Moving further, write the questions (they should not exceed 8-10) ensuring it is properly framed. Keep in mind to prevent creating a leading/biased question forcing a particular answer.
Next, once you’ve completed creating a google poll, test your poll before distribution. Ask your colleagues or friends to take the poll ensuring it works well.
Send to Selected Participants.
After you’ve tested your poll and everything is perfect to go. It’s time to select the participants and send the google forms to them. To capture unbiased results you need to target an audience representing your poll results. Based on your poll requirements, select a sample from a specific demographic, or geographic population.
To send your google form poll to the selected participants, click on the ‘Send’ option, choose a link, shorten the URL, and copy and paste the form wherever you want.
Conclusion
We are towards the end of this topic. It is very easy to create a poll in google forms, in just a few steps you can have a perfect poll ready for your audience. Besides, you must keep in mind to create unbiased polls, unleading questions, and properly utilize the polls data. Apart from people’s concerns, polls are now used as an informative weapon in politics. I hope this article was informative and understandable.
Google Forms have quite advanced features to look into and one of them is no doubt – Add-ons. Google Forms apps are very useful to make your forms a bit advanced in all ways. One of the best google form apps I know and have used is ExtendedForms. It is truly one of the best addons for google forms, the app is a countdown timer add-on.
The app is a better alternative to Quilgo, Form timer, and other such timer add-ons, as the google forms app provides hassle-free configuration and great features. It has features like classroom integration (you can connect your classroom with ExtendedForms), teams feature, manager team role, email & brand customization.
Further, you can set time limits, set admins and respondents anonymous, shorten URLs, and a lot more. The app has an intuitive dashboard that shows you a summary of your responses, further they also list down 10 respondents’ statuses. ExtendedForms is a cool google forms app that you should try!
