SnapShot FAQ
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Table of contents
Table of contents
Creating polls
Q. What are the different stages of creating a SnapShot poll?
A. There are five stages in creating a poll.
Question: Design your question:
Choose whether you are using a slider control to show a rating scale (very poor to very good) or a question where people select a specific answer.
Answer Option |
Default |
Question text |
None (rating scale for Slider Controls) |
Possible responses |
Two blank responses supplied. Maximum of ten responses |
The order of the responses |
As you lay it out on the screen (can also be random) |
The number of responses someone can select |
1 |
If you are using a slider, check the box saying Use a Slider Control, then click on the gallery to choose your slider.
Details: Set up the poll hosting details. These provide the information for people to search for your poll
Option |
Default |
Poll title |
None |
Description |
None |
Subject area |
Politics |
Keywords |
None supplied. Maximum of three |
Whether the poll is public |
No |
Picture: Set up the poll picture. You probably won't do this if you have a slider.
Style: Set up the poll colours and fonts then save your poll.
Complete: Get the HTML to display the poll on your website or the URL to link to your poll
Q. What is a "Slider Control"?
A Slider Control allows you to drag a bar or scale to give your answer:
Poll from Snap Survey Software
Snap provides templates for five point Slider Controls which you can use to set a value from very poor to very good.
Q. I don't like the look of the rating scales. Can I change them?
A. No. You can create your own Slider Controls and Map Controls in Snap 10.
Q. How can I display a rating scale?
A. In Step 1, there is a tab that says Slider Control. Click this tab. You can then select a Slider Control to use as a rating scale.
Q. Why are all the answer options greyed out?
A If you are using a Slider Control the template has set answers. You can still change the way the rest of your poll looks.
Q. There seem to be a lot of steps to creating a poll; do I need them all?
A. Your poll is only created once you have gone through all five creation steps. If you don't have time to do them all, enter your question and answers and then jump to stage 4, using the links at the side and click 
to save your poll. Your poll will be created using the default values. You can make further changes to it at another time.
Q. I'd like to present the answer list to my question in a difference sequence each time. How do I do that?
A. You can change the answer sequence in polls you have created.
- Click
to edit your poll. The edit poll screen opens in stage Question. - Select Random in the Answer Order drop-down list.
This is a good idea when you have a list of names/products as it will help to avoid bias, with the respondents often picking the first or the last option on the screen.
Q. If you select Random Ordering, why do you then have an option to fix a response's position?
A. If one of your answers is "None of the above", you would always want it to be the last option in the list. By fixing that one answer, you are still able to select Random so that the other answers appear in a random order.
Q. What is an "exclusive" response?
A. An exclusive response is only used when you allow respondents to select more than one answer. It means that if they select that answer, they cannot select any other answers as well. For example, if one of your answers is "None of the above", you would always want it to be the only response selected.
Q. How do I get a picture small enough for the poll?
A. If you are creating a new image, then it is easiest to start with a canvas the correct size. In the software program Microsoft Paint, you can use Image|Attributes to set the size of your picture to 48 * 48 pixels, and then create the picture you want.
If you have a picture already, you will need to use a image editing package to shrink it to the required size.
- To edit your picture in Paint, first identify and select the important part of the picture
- Copy and paste the selection to a new image. (If your new picture is larger than the selection you are pasting, use Image|Attributes to set the size to 48 * 48 pixels before you paste).
- Use Image|Attributes to see the current size of your image in pixels. This one is 212 * 244.
- Use Image|Stretch/Skew to shrink your image to approximately the right size. This image has been reduced to 20% of its original size
- Check the image attributes again.
- This one is now 43 * 49 so is nearly small enough for a poll picture. To get it exactly right, you could Undo the stretch and reduce the image to 19% instead of 20%, or change the height in image attributes to 48 pixels to trim it to the right size. (Note that it can be smaller than 48 * 48.)
- Save your edited image in JPG or GIF format, ready to add to your poll.
Q. I would like to have more than two possible responses on my poll. What is the maximum number I'm allowed?
A. You can have up to 10 responses on your poll. You can also specify the number of answers that a respondent is able to select.
Q. Can I say when the poll is going to stop?
A. You can stop private polls whenever you like. You can stop hosting someone else's public poll but you cannot stop the poll. You can stop your own public polls if no-one else is hosting them.
Q. I'm unhappy about the responses I chose for a poll I made. Can I change them?
A. You can only change them if no-one else is hosting your poll. Open the My Polls page and click to edit your poll.
Q. I used Back/Refresh on my half-completed poll page and now I get a message saying "The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted" and I can't do anything with my poll.
A. Sorry, you'll have to create a new poll. If you use Refresh or Back in the middle of creating a poll, the Poll creation software cannot recall the temporary data you entered. Click the "My Polls" tab to start again.
Q. Why does my poll looks different on my web page to the preview?
A. Some of the layout of the poll is handled by a stylesheet. If you have a stylesheet on your web page, it may affect the poll's stylesheet.
Sharing polls
Q. I've created a poll that I want to let other people use. Can I look at the responses they receive?
A. You can make your poll public by checking the "Public" box on the Details page. That means that anyone registered on the SnapShot Polls site can host it. You can then see all the responses to that poll or just the ones from the poll you are hosting.
Q. How can I put the poll on my website?
A. When you create the poll, step five ( Complete) displays the HTML code to paste into your website at the point where you want the poll to appear. If you need to get the HTML after you've created a poll, click the 
icon on the My Polls page to display it.
Q. I want to ask friends and colleagues to answer my poll question, but I don't have a website. What should I do?
A. Use the URL link provided on the Complete page and paste it into a suitable email.
Your results
Q. How do I see the poll results?
A. Click 
to display the Results page, and then select the poll you want to look at.
Q. How do I keep my poll results if I want to delete the poll?
A. You can download the answers before you delete the poll.
- Click the icon.
- Select the poll in the drop-down list.
- Click the "Get data as CSV file" link.
This downloads a zip file containing the data in CSV and triple-S format.
Q. Can I find out who voted for which answers in my poll?
A. The results of a poll are anonymous. Each response is stamped with the time and date, so you can find out when each vote was made.
Q. Will I be able to track changing poll response patterns over time?
A. Download the poll data and it includes date and time of each response.
Q. How can I analyse the time and date information?
A. Downloaded data is provided in CSV or triple-S format so you can use it in many software packages including Snap Professional.
Searching polls
Q. Can I change the order that the public polls are displayed in?
A. Yes. Click the column heading to sort by that column. Click it again to reverse the sort.
Q. How do I save my survey as a draft?
A. Create it as a private survey. Then other people can't see it unless you publicise it and you can edit it as much as you like until you're ready to show people. You can make it a public poll at any time by editing your survey and checking the "Public" box on the Details page.
Q. What are keywords and how do I use them?
A. Keywords are used to identify polls and to make them easier to find. For example, you could tag a poll about the Large Hadron Collider with "Physics" and "Research"
Q. I can't find the poll I've created in the Public Polls, even though I've made it public. What's happened?
A. You only see other people's polls in the Public Polls list. Polls you have created only appear in your My Polls list.
Other
Q. Where can I find out more about polls?
A. Polls are discussed in this article.