Pulse Survey User Guide

A Pulse Survey is a fast, lightweight survey that lets you field questions to a representative sample and get results -- typically within 24 to 48 hours.

• Understanding how an audience thinks about a policy issue or current event
• Rapid response understanding where audiences stand during breaking news, policy shifts, or fast-moving events
• Testing how different issue frames land before committing to a message
• Gauging sentiment across demographic subgroups (gender, age, race)
• Generating fast, defensible data to inform strategy or communicate with stakeholders
• Quick reads on audience attitudes before a content push or campaign launch
• Gut-checking assumptions before committing to a larger questionnaire or research program
• Answering follow-up questions that emerged from a previous study
• Temperature checks between full-length polling or other research

Pulse Surveys support three question types:

• Single-select -- respondents choose one answer from a list (e.g., favorability, agreement scales)
• Multi-select -- respondents choose all answers that apply
• Open-ended -- respondents type a free-text response

Step 1: Name your survey and set your audience

When you create a new Pulse Survey, you'll give it a name (e.g., "War on Iran") and select your audience. (Pro-Tip: Make sure the title of your survey allows you to quickly identify the testing subject matter.) The platform recruits a representative sample based on the audience you specify -- for example, US national, or a filtered audience like Bachelor's Degree or Higher.

After recruitment, participants answer a standard set of demographic questions: age, race, education, income, and party identification. These become available as subgroups in your results.

Step 2: Add your questions

In the survey builder, you'll see a "Build your survey questions" section. For each question, you'll:

1. Select a question type from the dropdown: Open-ended, Single-select, or Multi-select
2. Enter a display name -- this is the short title that appears as the header in your results (e.g., "Favorability" or "Iran War & Prices"). Keep it brief and descriptive.
3. Enter your question text -- the full question as respondents will see it (e.g., "How in favor are you of the war in Iran?")
4. For single-select and multi-select: Choose an answer set from the dropdown. Available answer sets include standard scales like Favorability (Very Favorable / Somewhat Favorable / Somewhat Unfavorable / Very Unfavorable). You can also check "Include 'Neither' in Answer Options" if you want a midpoint.

A live preview of the question and answer choices appears at the bottom before you add.

Click Add question to confirm each question, then repeat for any additional questions.

Step 3: Preview and launch

Before launching, you'll see a Preview screen summarizing:

• Your survey name
• The audience being recruited and the demographic questions that will be asked
• All questions in the order they'll appear

If everything looks right, click Launch survey. If you need to make changes, click Back to builder.

Overall results (bar chart view)

Each question displays a bar chart showing the percentage of respondents who selected each answer. Bars are color-coded by answer option, with a legend below the chart.

Confidence intervals appear as vertical lines at the top of each bar. These indicate the range of uncertainty around each estimate given the sample size. Wider intervals mean more uncertainty -- common with smaller samples.

The total number of interviews (e.g., "Interviews: 789") appears in the lower right.

Subgroup breakdowns

You can view results broken down by demographic subgroup using the "View by" filter. Select one or more subgroups (e.g., Men, Women) to see side-by-side bar charts for each group.

When a subgroup has a small sample, the bars will display a hatched pattern and a "Small Sample Size" warning will appear. Treat these results with caution -- the confidence intervals will be wide and the estimates less reliable.

Cross-tab table view

Click the Breakdown tab on any question to see results in a table format. The table shows:

• Overall -- the full-sample result for each answer option
• Gender -- results broken out by Men and Women
• Age -- results broken out by 18-34, 35-54, and 55+
• Race -- results broken out by Black, Latino, White, and Other

This view is useful for quickly scanning which subgroups diverge from the overall and by how much.

Each Pulse Survey costs 10 credits.

If you have questions about your results or need help designing your survey, reach out to your Grow Progress contact or visit the Help Center.