Introducing survey tasks: structured questions, answered in context

Survey tasks are a new task type in Indeemo that let participants answer structured, closed questions in one of four formats, single select, multi select, sliding scale or ranking order, within the same qualitative study as their video, photo, screen-recording and diary tasks. They are live now for every account, at no extra cost, every time you create a task.

If you're new to Indeemo: it's a qualitative research platform where participants document real life as it happens, capturing videos, photos, screen recordings and diary entries on their own phones, and researchers follow it all in one place. Survey tasks add the structured question to that toolkit.

This article covers what survey tasks are, why a structured question answered in context is worth more than the same question asked in the abstract, and what it unlocks when every participant in a video-rich study answers the same question the same way.

What are survey tasks?

A survey task is a task type you build into your study flow, exactly as you would a video, photo or text task. Instead of an open-ended prompt, it asks a fixed, structured question, and there are four question types to choose from:

• Single select: participants choose one answer from a list. The forced choice: which of these would you buy, which best describes your routine, which mattered most.
• Multi select: participants choose every answer that applies. For the messier realities: which of these barriers did you hit, which features did you notice, which occasions does this fit.
• Sliding scale: participants score on a scale of up to 11 points. For intensity and direction: ease of use, relevance, agreement, likelihood to repurchase.
• Ranking order: participants put a set of options in order. For trade-offs and preference: rank the pack designs, order the consideration set, prioritise what got in the way.

With any of these, you can embed a stimulus, such as a concept, a pack design or an image, directly in the task and ask about it, which makes concept and pack testing feel native rather than bolted on.

Because it is a task like any other, you decide where it sits in the flow. Sequence one after a video task, schedule one at the same point in every wave of a diary study, or place one mid-way through a shopper mission. Every participant answers the same question, the same way, and the responses are comparable across your whole cohort, and across segments, markets and waves.

Why ask structured questions inside a qualitative study?

There is a reason qualitative researchers observe real behaviour rather than relying on what people say up front. Ask someone at the start of a study how they do something and you get the organised answer: genuinely believed, carefully considered, and rarely the whole story. Watch the same moment unfold across a week of real mornings and evenings and you see what actually happens when people are tired, in a rush, under social pressure, or improvising. The gap between the two, the say-do gap, shows up in study after study, and it is where the most valuable insight lives.

Structured questions have traditionally lived on the wrong side of that gap. A standalone survey asks people to summarise, recall and rationalise in the abstract, away from the behaviour itself. The answers are sincere, but they are the organised account, not the lived one.

Survey tasks change where the question gets asked. Because they sit inside the same study, answered by the same participants and sequenced close to the moments they are documenting, the structured read is grounded in the context of real behaviour rather than a tidy reconstruction of it. A rating given the same evening as the diary entry, or straight after a shop, sits far closer to the lived experience than one given in a questionnaire weeks later.

The unlock: answers that natigate your video

The deeper value is what comparable answers do to a video-rich dataset. When every participant answers the same closed question, the responses become a way to navigate the qualitative evidence. Sort by any answer and watch the “why” behind each camp, side by side: everyone who rated a concept high against everyone who rated it low, in their own words, in their own context.

Your video, photo, screen-recording and diary tasks remain the heart of the study. That is where the why lives, and nothing about survey tasks changes it. What they add is a structured layer on top of the evidence you are already capturing, and it is a layer a standalone survey tool cannot match: a survey on its own gives you a split with no behaviour behind it, an answer detached from the moment it describes. Sequence the same closed question inside your study and every answer arrives attached to the footage that explains it, so your findings land as a structured, comparable, chart-ready read with the human evidence behind every cut. For the stakeholders who need a quantified output, that is a way to put numbers in the deck without leaving the qualitative evidence behind.

What this looks like in practice

Concept, product and stimulus testing

Embed the stimulus, a concept, a pack design, a wireframe, an image or even a video, directly in the task and ask about it. Single select forces the choice between concepts, ranking order sorts preference across pack designs, and a sliding scale scores appeal or likelihood to buy. Because the same participants are documenting real use on camera, every score arrives with the behaviour that explains it, and the same questions run identically across concepts, segments and markets for a clean, like for like read within your cohort.

Consumer and in-home research

Participants across 50+ homes and multiple markets document their real routines, and a survey task sequenced after the video lets each of them rate ease of use, rank pack designs, or score likelihood to repurchase. Embed the concept in the task and test it directly, with the footage of real use sitting behind every score.

Shopper and path-to-purchase research

A shopper documents their journey from the Instagram scroll to the search to the shelf, and a survey task placed mid-mission asks them to rank their consideration set, choose what they would buy, or rate how easy the product was to find. You get a structured read on the decisions at each step of the observed journey, and every answer is a route back to the video of the shopper at the fixture.

Digital, media and feed research

Participants screen-record their real feeds, narrating what catches their eye, and a survey task straight afterwards, while what they saw is fresh rather than half-remembered, captures relevance ratings, attention rankings or brand perception scores. The clip and the score come from the same person, in the same session.

Healthcare and wellness research

Patients and caregivers keep longitudinal diaries of life between clinic visits, and structured check-ins, asked identically at every wave within the same consented, secure environment, add a consistent thread through the weeks. See change over time and go straight to the diary entries behind any shift. These are structured check-ins to sit alongside the qualitative record, not validated clinical measures, and that is exactly the job they do well.

Iterative and multi-wave research

For iterative product work and diary studies that run in waves, schedule the same survey task at the same point in every round. Asked identically each time, it becomes a consistent thread through the study: compare a concept as it evolves between rounds, watch a rating shift as a routine beds in, and go straight to the videos or diary entries behind any change. Each round of testing sharpens the next, without adding a separate tool to the stack.

Where survey tasks fit

Survey tasks are built for the way qualitative studies actually run: focused cohorts, real contexts, evidence you can watch. The read they give you is structured, comparable and directional within your cohort: enough to see which concept divides people and why, which pack design wins, and how a routine shifts across the weeks of a study. And because every answer comes from a participant whose behaviour you are already documenting, the numbers arrive with the behaviour that explains them. If your programme also runs large-scale validation, the qualitative stage now feeds it a sharper brief: a structured read on what to test, grounded in what people actually do.

Getting started

Survey tasks are live now for every Indeemo account, at no extra cost. You will find them alongside your existing task types every time you create a task. If you are running an active study, one note before you field: the new app is not backwards compatible, so make sure you and your participants are on the latest version of the Indeemo app.

And whether you're an experienced researcher or a brand team exploring this kind of research for the first time, you don't have to figure it out alone. Use the platform independently, or partner with our Catalyst team for study design, recruitment, moderation and analysis, whatever you need to get from question to insight.

Want to see survey tasks on one of your own studies? Book a demo and we will walk you through it.

Frequently asked questions

What question types do survey tasks support?

Survey tasks support four question types: single select (choose one answer), multi select (choose all that apply), sliding scale (score on a scale of up to 11 points), and ranking order (put a set of options in order). With any of them, you can embed a stimulus, such as a concept, a pack design or an image, directly in the task and ask about it.

When should you use a survey task?

Anywhere in the study flow where a structured answer would sharpen the open-ended evidence. Sequence one after a video task to capture a rating while the moment is fresh, schedule one at the same point in every wave of a diary study to see change over time, or place one mid-way through a shopper mission to catch decisions as they happen. Because survey tasks are a task type like any other, you decide where they sit.

Do survey tasks cost extra?

No. Survey tasks are live now for every Indeemo account, at no extra cost. You will find them alongside your existing task types every time you create a task.

How is a survey task different from a standalone survey?

A standalone survey asks people to summarise, recall and rationalise in the abstract, away from the behaviour itself. A survey task is answered by the same participants, in the same study, sequenced close to the moments they are documenting, so the structured read sits close to the lived experience rather than a tidy reconstruction of it. And because every answer comes from someone whose behaviour you are already watching, the responses double as a way to navigate your video evidence.

What is Indeemo?

Indeemo is a qualitative research platform for understanding what people actually do. Participants document real behaviour, capturing videos, photos, screen recordings and texts through a mobile app, as it happens, and researchers follow everything in one place. It works end to end: recruit participants from a global panel, run research in 30+ languages, and turn what you capture into evidence stakeholders can watch. Survey tasks are the newest task type in the platform, and you can use them in any study alongside every other task type.