Describe your organization, stakeholders, and ESG topics. Makeform creates a materiality assessment questionnaire with consistent scales, segmentation, and comments, ready to edit and share.
Send responses to Google Sheets, Slack, and Zapier for analysis and follow-up.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a starting point, adapt it, and send it to the Makeform builder. Each example shows a suggested structure.
Audience
Employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and community partners
Format
Two-scale topic rating with stakeholder segmentation
Prompt size
328 chars
Example questionnaire structure
Two-scale topic rating with stakeholder segmentation
Which stakeholder group best describes you?
Rate the significance of impacts for each topic
Rate financial risks or opportunities
Choose your three highest priorities
What have we missed?
Suggested analysis tags
Internal stakeholders
External stakeholders
High-priority topics
Use one defined scale for every topic and include not sure. Consistent choices support comparison without forcing uninformed ratings.
Step 1
Define
stakeholders, topic universe, and assessment scope
Step 2
Rate
consistent importance, impact, and risk scales
Step 3
Prioritize
top issues, rankings, and explanatory comments
Step 4
Analyze
compare segments and document the review trail
Better stakeholder evidence
A structured questionnaire keeps core wording and scales stable while preserving who responded and why they rated a topic highly.
Repeat labeled scales across topics to compare distributions and not sure responses without translating mismatched answers.
Tag responses by stakeholder group, geography, or relationship to find where audience priorities diverge.
Conditional comments add context after a high or low score for review alongside numeric rankings.
One core, tailored context
Keep core measures comparable, then tailor context and follow-ups to each audience's knowledge.
Ask about workforce experience, operational impacts, ethics, and issues visible through each role or location.
Focus on product responsibility, accessibility, privacy, climate expectations, and trust.
Cover sourcing, labor, resources, resilience, and value-chain action.
Use plain language for local effects, community investment, access, jobs, and continued dialogue.
Questionnaire workflow
Generate a starting point, then review scope, wording, scales, and distribution before collecting responses.
List boundaries, stakeholder groups, reporting horizon, and candidate ESG topics. Merge duplicates before drafting.
Describe the model, scales, and audience. Make definitions neutral, concise, and free of internal jargon.
Test interpretation, mobile flow, and missing topics or choices with a small cross-section.
Export responses, compare segments and comments, and document how evidence became priorities.
Choose the right evidence
Questionnaires provide repeatable measures; interviews and workshops add depth. Many assessments combine them.
Field guide
Build questions around the decision your ESG team needs to make. Clear scope, neutral definitions, stable scales, and structured context make the resulting data easier to interpret.
Respondent context
Collect only attributes needed for analysis. Stakeholder type, region, relationship, or familiarity can explain differences without requiring names.
Topic definitions
Short definitions reduce interpretation drift. Describe scope without implying importance, performance, or a preferred response.
Rating dimensions
Ask separately about impact, financial relevance, concern, or urgency when those dimensions matter to your method.
Prioritization
Follow broad ratings with limited selection or ranking to reveal relative priority instead of uniformly high scores.
Qualitative context
Focused comments reveal affected groups, locations, time horizons, and emerging issues. Keep general comments optional.
Consent & follow-up
Explain purpose, completion time, confidentiality, and aggregation. Collect follow-up permission separately from anonymous ratings.
Related tools
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Open toolRecord risks, likelihood, effects, controls, and ownership.
Open toolUnderstand the workforce experience alongside employee views on ESG priorities.
Open toolGather supplier performance and relationship evidence for value-chain discussions.
Open toolAsk stakeholders how they want to receive updates and participate in future engagement.
Open toolFAQ
Answers for ESG stakeholder outreach.
It gathers stakeholder views on defined ESG topics using measures such as impact, importance, financial relevance, or urgency. Respondents identify priorities and explain key ratings. It provides evidence; it does not make the final decision.
Choose groups connected to impacts, risks, opportunities, or decisions: employees, customers, suppliers, investors, communities, partners, and specialists. Define each group's relevance and monitor participation so one audience does not dominate.
Use separate labeled scales for distinct judgments, such as effects on people or the environment and financial relevance. Keep wording and direction identical, define endpoints, and offer not sure.
Keep core definitions and ratings consistent for comparison, but tailor context and follow-ups. Conditional logic can show audience-specific questions only when relevant. Document substantial version differences before combining scores.
There is no universal count. Start from your scope, merge overlaps, and pilot completion time. Group topics without concealing distinct impacts, and let respondents identify missing issues.
Use neutral definitions, consistent scales, balanced order, and not sure. Avoid describing programs before ratings. Test with several audiences and interpret scores alongside comments, interviews, evidence, and documented methods.
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses, so you can generate, edit, publish, and collect stakeholder submissions without a response cap. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge.
Export submissions, check data quality, and compare distributions by stakeholder group. Review not sure rates, rankings, explanations, and missing-topic comments. Document weighting, thresholds, exclusions, and judgment calls.
Start stakeholder engagement with consistent questions.
