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Create and run a multiple choice poll


Slido Team
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Slido is gradually rolling out a new user interface. If the below steps and visuals match what you are seeing within your account, then you are using the new interface and this article is for you. If not, please see this version.

 

Use a multiple choice poll to learn more about your audience’s preferences, their opinions, or to test their knowledge.

 

In this article:

 

 

Create a multiple choice poll

 

  1. Open your slido and click the + Add new button
  2. Select Multiple choice
  3. Type in your question and answer options 
  4. Hit Start to activate your poll instantly or click + Add new to create another
Create a multiple choice poll

 

No need to worry about saving your progress. Polls are saved automatically.

 

 

Multiple choice poll options

 

You can customize your multiple choice poll in a few different ways. Select the Poll options in the upper right corner to see the below settings.

  • Multiple options: Allow your participants to select more than one answer option
     
  • Mark correct answer: Designate one of your answer options as being the “correct” option
     
  • Poll description: Add a description for added context
     
  • Poll results: Choose whether your live poll results will be visible or hidden for participants
     
  • Add image: Add an image to be displayed alongside your poll question
     

Pro tip:

If you mark a correct answer, you can reveal the correct answer(s) to your audience at any time using the control bar. Just click the checkmark icon.

 

Reveal the correct answer to a multiple choice poll

 

 

Test your poll and see how it works for participants

 

To see how the poll works for your participants:

  1. Activate your poll by clicking the green Start button 
  2. Select the View as participant option near the bottom right corner
  3. Submit an answer as a participant and click Exit participant mode when finished
     
Test the multiple choice participant experience

 

You can delete your testing response by clicking the three-dot menu next to your poll and selecting Reset results.

 

 

Run your multiple choice poll

 

When you’re ready to run your poll for your participants, simply activate the poll and open Present mode. You can share your screen while using Present mode and display your poll results live for all to see.

 

By default, answer options are ordered based on popularity and results are displayed as percentages. However, you can change how results are displayed in event settings.

 

See below what a rating poll looks like in Present mode.
 

Multiple choice poll in Present mode

 

Pro tip: To prevent your audience from getting influenced by other participants’ answers, you can hide the results until you get enough votes. Keep an eye on the vote counter in the top right corner and reveal the final results when you’re ready.


 

Why don’t my results always add up to exactly 100%?
 

If you have enabled multiple answers for a multiple choice poll, then there is a high chance that the sum of all results will exceed 100%. For example, if every participant chose all of the available options, then each option would display 100% and the sum of all results would be 100% × number of options available. This is expected and should be quite intuitive.

 

 

 

Learn more:

https://community.slido.com/live-polls-quizzes-and-surveys-55/create-a-poll-quiz-or-a-survey-414https://community.slido.com/live-polls-quizzes-and-surveys-55/run-a-word-cloud-via-slido-418https://community.slido.com/live-polls-quizzes-and-surveys-55/run-a-quiz-via-slido-538https://community.slido.com/live-polls-quizzes-and-surveys-55/run-a-rating-poll-via-slido-855https://community.slido.com/live-polls-quizzes-and-surveys-55/run-an-open-text-poll-885https://community.slido.com/live-polls-quizzes-and-surveys-55/run-a-ranking-poll-727

 

Is it possible to display the result of a poll in multiple ways? eg I have a multiple choice question which allows people to select 5 best responses from a list of 24. I want to see everyone’s results for this as a the standard horizontal bar graph and also want to display the results as a word cloud on the next slide. Can I create a word cloud from my multiple choice results?


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Hi @goosetogo,

It’s not possible to display poll results in multiple ways at the moment, but you can export your results and format your responses into graphs or other visuals.

Polls will only show you results in one format (i.e. word cloud polls will show a word cloud), but you can export your responses into Excel or Google sheets and then format the results.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions :)


  • June 9, 2022

Is it possible to create a multiple choice but only have two of the three choices count in the total percentage? For example, in our board votes we have for, against, or abstain but only the For(s) and Against(s) count in whether the vote passes or not.  Thank you, Tina


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Hey @TinaB,

At the moment, all options in the multiple choice poll will count in the total percentage. As a workaround, you could show the number of votes instead of percentages or you could export your results and then remove the ‘abstain’ option from the exported sheet.

Does this help? :)


Is there a limit on how many choices we can put in?


Cori from slido
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Hi @JDresser

There isn’t a strict limit on how many choices can be input, however, there are character limits for Polls & Q&A

Just for reference, the character limit is 256 characters, but there is a workaround to add a poll description

Hope this helps!

 


  • November 8, 2022

I have created multiple options poll there are 15 options, in each row it adds one option is there a way to add two options in a row?


Cori from slido
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Hi @Bhagya

It sounds like you could mean that due to the fifteen options, the display in present mode isn’t showing all of them. There isn’t a way to format this to show two options in a row and our polls can generally display 8 options in present mode without the need to scroll. To remedy this, we do have an option to Zoom In/Out in present mode, making displaying options easier!

Let me know if you have any more questions or there’s anything we can do to help! Our customer care team are available 24/5 on support@slido.com to take a closer look. 

Hope this helps! 
 


  • May 26, 2023

I want to give a multiple choice question to a group, but I want there to be two different versions of the question (with different wording).  Is there a way to randomly assign participants to the different questions?

Full disclosure, I want to replicate the anchor bias discussed in Gladwell’s book Blink.  So one group would get these two questions:

Was Gandhi younger than 30 when he died? (y/n)

How old was Gandhi when he died?

 

The other group would get these two questions

Was Gandhi older than 100 when he died? (y/n)

How old was Gandhi when he died?

Thanks!


Ondrej from Slido
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Hello @JWPaul 

I would recommend creating two separate polls for this. 

After that you could copy and paste a permanent link to a specific poll and manually share different link with a different group of people. 

Another alternative would be creating two separate events in Slido and for each Slido there would be a different poll and again instead of sharing permanent link to a specific poll you could share a permanent link directly with someone for a specific group. 


  • May 30, 2023

Thanks.  I think I will need to make two polls and two links to make this work. 


Hello Slido-Team :)

Your tool would be he perfect fit for my live-show, I’m just missing on little thing and I’m wondering if I’m overlooking something or if there might be a workaround. 

Basically what I’d need is this: 

A comprehensible list of participants names (I saw that you can log in with a name) linked to the answers they gave. So that at the end of the show I can see: Participant A answered 5 questions right, participant B only 3 right answers etc. 

Am I overlooking something or is that not possible at the moment?


Carly from Slido
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Hey @JD_Liveprod ,

This is possible! You would use the “Poll results per User” option in the Exports, this will share a list of all participants and how theyve responded to each Poll.

You should also be sure to collect names and emails, as well as set the Participant privacy to “always require name” so that they cannot submit anonymously.

Be sure to check the Plans which include these features as some of them are paid features.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Best,


Thank you Carly, that helped a lot :)


  • October 7, 2023

Hi! Seeking expert opinion 🙈 what is fairer , a ranking poll (3choices) or multiple choice poll(choose 3 options) for winner by audience choice?

 

For a story competition for audience to vote top 3 authors out of 12 finalists? We need 1 clear winner, 2 runner-ups(same amount of votes r alright). 


Carly from Slido
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Hey @Jaja ,

Thanks for your question!

I would suggest using a Multiple Choice poll for this so it would show you by number of votes who would be 1, 2, and 3 place as our Ranking poll calculation would allow each person to rank those authors themselves in order of preference to them.

You can find more about the calculation of the ranking poll here.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Best,


Would it be possible to have free text function under multiple choice? I would like to achieve the function that I have one option ‘Others’ and participants who choose ‘Others’ can type in words and specify.


Carly from Slido
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Hey @Vousmevoyez , 

That function is not currently an option within Slido but we will submit this as a feature request for future consideration!

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Best,


Hello! Sorry if this question has been asked before but I couldn’t find the answer for myself.

I want to do a multiple choice pool with 5 possible answers but I want the respondent to select 3 out of those 5 answers. Is it possible? 

Many thanks!

 


Carly from Slido
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Hey @EstelleL ,

Thanks for your questions!

I have included screenshots of how you can do this, from our Old and New interfaces above.

You need to add 5 poll options before you can select allow 3 options to be chosen (it will only show the amount of poll options you have, if you add 3 poll options they can only choose up to 3 options).

Let us know if this helps!

Best,


Would it be possible to have free text function under multiple choice? I would like to achieve the function that I have one option ‘Other’ and participants who choose ‘Other’ can type in words and specify.


Carly from Slido
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Hey @Chai Hong ,

This is not currently a feature supported in Slido.

We will share your feedback and request to the team for future consideration.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Best,


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