n addition to question wording and answer options, Attest provides a set of question settings that allow you to control how respondents interact with your survey. These settings help reduce bias, improve clarity, and ensure respondents can answer questions accurately.

This article covers common question and answer settings. More advanced behaviour, such as qualifying questions, routing, display logic, or piping, is covered in separate articles.

Additional answer options

For many questions, predefined answer options may not fully cover every respondent’s situation. Attest provides three additional answer options that can be enabled to account for this: Other, None, and N/A.

These options are designed to improve both respondent experience and data quality by allowing respondents to answer honestly when standard options are not suitable.

Other

When enabled on single-choice or multiple-choice questions, respondents will see an option labelled Other (add your own). Selecting this allows them to enter a free-text response.

Use Other when:

the range of possible answers is broad
you want to capture unexpected responses
listing every possible option would make the question hard to read

Avoid using Other when free-text responses are not useful for your analysis.

None

Use None when respondents may not identify with any of the listed answers and you do not want to force them to choose one.

None is suitable when:

the answers represent experiences or attributes that may not apply
selecting an incorrect option would introduce noise into your data

None can be enabled across most question types.

N/A

Use N/A when a question may not apply to all respondents due to their circumstances.

N/A is useful when:

the question assumes a behaviour or situation not shared by everyone
respondents should explicitly indicate that the question does not apply to them

Like None, N/A can be enabled across most question types.

Answer settings

Each question includes additional answer-level settings that control how respondents can interact with answer options.

Multiple choice limit

For multiple-choice questions, you can limit how many answers a respondent can select. This is useful when you want to restrict responses to a specific number, such as “select up to three”.

Randomise answers

Answer options are randomised by default to reduce order bias. Each respondent sees the answers in a different order. You can turn this off if the order of answers is meaningful.

Answer pinning

When randomisation is enabled, you can pin specific answers so they remain in a fixed position. This is commonly used for options such as None or N/A. Click the Pin icon on the right hand side of an answer, it will set that answer in place when the randomise answers feature is on.

Formatting questions and messages

You can apply basic formatting to questions and text cards using bold and italic styling to improve readability.

Formatting is applied using markdown syntax or keyboard shortcuts:

Bold: Cmd + B or Ctrl + B
Italic: Cmd + I or Ctrl + I

While drafting, you will see the markdown syntax rather than the formatted text. Use Preview to see how formatting will appear to respondents.

Supported markdown:

**text** for bold
_text_ for italics
**_text_** for bold and italics

FAQ

Should I always include Other, None, or N/A?

No. These options should be used intentionally. Include them when they help respondents answer accurately, and avoid them when they would dilute the usefulness of the data.

Why do some respondents get filtered out when using None or N/A frequently?

Attest applies quality checks to identify respondents who consistently select non-informative options. This helps protect data quality and ensures results reflect engaged respondents.