Pulse Surveys: Overview and Best Practices
Communications and strategy teams move faster than traditional research can keep up. Campaigns shift quickly, news cycles move daily, and decisions must be made long before a six-week research cycle can deliver answers. The alternative is guessing, which puts money, support, and momentum at risk.
A Pulse Survey is a short, targeted survey that measures where your audience stands right now. You ask up to 15 custom questions -- on issues, sentiment, or messaging -- and receive clean, credible results within days, so you get trusted data.
Key Details
Cost: 10 credits per survey
Questions: Up to 15 (single-select, multi-select, or open-ended)
Turnaround: Results typically delivered within a few days of fielding, but may vary based on target audience.
How to request Available directly in Grow Progress platform
Results: Delivered in the platform
When to Use a Pulse Survey
A Pulse Survey is a lightweight, fast-turnaround survey designed to quickly capture where an audience stands on a specific topic or question or when you’re not ready with messaging to test but still want reliable guidance for your program.
Use a Pulse Survey for:
- Quick reads on audience attitudes before a content push or campaign launch
- Rapid response understanding where audiences stand during breaking news, policy shifts, or fast-moving events
- 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
Best Practices
Use Pulse for quick signals, not deep dives. Pulse Surveys tell you where your audience is right now, not why they feel that way, or what might change their mind. For deeper understanding of your audience, use an Audience Understanding Survey and to test what messages and content move opinion, use a Rapid Message Test.
Keep questions focused on a single topic or decision. The more your survey zeroes in on one thing, the clearer and more actionable your results will be.
Candidate Preference or "Horse Race" Questions in Pulse Surveys
Candidate preference questions, commonly referred to as a "horse race" question, are a great fit for Pulse Surveys when you need a quick, directional read on where a race stands. They can tell you whether a candidate is ahead, behind, or in a competitive position at a given moment, giving you actionable insight when timing matters. These are snapshots, not predictions. They're designed to inform decisions right now, not forecast Election Day outcomes.
Pulse Surveys vs. Traditional Polls
Pulse surveys are designed for speed and affordability. When you need timely insight and can't wait weeks for a full-length poll, they're one of the most cost-effective ways to get a real read on your issue or race. Traditional polls involve more extensive sampling and longer fielding times, which means more time and more budget. Pulse surveys won't replace a full poll when you need that level of depth — but when you need a strong signal fast, they're the right tool.
Methodology Notes on How to Use Pulse Survey Results
A few things to keep in mind when using results in a political or advocacy context:
- Party composition may vary. Results are weighted by age, race, and gender, but partisan makeup may not perfectly match your target electorate.
- Small subgroups need careful handling. When filtering results by a narrow subgroup, sample sizes get small quickly. Results flagged with a Small Sample Size indicator are best used as directional signals rather than standalone findings.
Used in the right context, Pulse Surveys are a powerful and efficient way to inform decisions. These considerations are just about making sure you're drawing the right conclusions from your data.
Ready to Run a Pulse Survey?
To build and launch your own survey, see How to Build & Launch a Pulse Survey (https://helpcenter.growprogress.ai/how-to-build-launch-a-pulse-survey).
To plan your survey with a development worksheet, see A Guide to Completing Your Pulse Survey Development Worksheet (https://helpcenter.growprogress.ai/a-guide-to-completing-your-pulse-survey-development-worksheet).
For help interpreting your results, see the Pulse Survey Results Interpretation Guide.