Describe your population and research aim. Makeform creates a social support survey about emotional, practical, informational, and companionship support, including sources and gaps.
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Sample prompts for the builder
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Audience
Adults participating in a neighborhood needs assessment
Format
Anonymous cross-sectional survey
Prompt size
348 chars
Example survey structure
Anonymous cross-sectional survey
Who can you usually turn to for support?
How often is emotional support available?
What practical help have you received recently?
What makes support harder to access?
Would you like information about local resources?
Suggested routing tags
Strong support network
Unmet practical needs
Follow-up requested
Separate available support from support received. Help may exist but remain inaccessible because of timing, trust, cost, or transportation.
Step 1
Define
population, time frame, and research question
Step 2
Measure
sources, types, availability, and receipt
Step 3
Protect
optional items and clear response choices
Step 4
Learn
compare patterns and plan follow-up
Support in usable detail
Identify who offers help, what is available or received, and what prevented access when a need arose.
Separate family, friends, neighbors, peers, professionals, organizations, and online communities without names.
Measure listening, advice, practical assistance, companionship, and emergency help as different experiences.
Pair consistent frequency or availability scales with unmet needs, access barriers, and optional examples.
Adapt to your setting
Keep core constructs consistent while adjusting sources, time frames, language, and follow-up choices.
Map informal networks, local organizations, practical needs, and obstacles to finding help.
Repeat the same support items at baseline and follow-up while tracking network and resource changes.
Cover listening, respite, errands, information, emergency backup, reciprocity, and gaps.
Measure peer connection, trusted guidance, belonging, practical assistance, and help-seeking barriers.
Survey workflow
Define the construct, then review each item for relevance, burden, and a clear analysis path.
State who responds, the decision supported, the setting, and whether the survey is one-time or repeated.
Choose perceived availability, support received, network sources, unmet needs, or reciprocity, and give behavior questions a defined period.
Make nonessential identity items optional, explain data use, offer nonresponse choices, and provide a contact or resource path.
Test interpretation with a few representative readers, then align response scales, routing, and exports with the comparisons you intend to make.
Choose the right method
Social support can be network structure, personal experience, or a detailed story. Let the research question determine the method.
Field guide
Six question groups describe support without treating every relationship or kind of help as interchangeable.
Sources
Ask about relationship or service categories rather than names unless network mapping is essential.
Emotional support
Ask whether someone is available to listen or provide encouragement when needed.
Practical support
Examples include transportation, errands, meals, caregiving, paperwork, or urgent help.
Information
Ask about understandable information, advice, referrals, or help navigating services.
Connection
Support includes people to spend time with, join in activities, or contact outside a crisis.
Access
Ask whether support exists, was sought or received, and what made access difficult.
Related tools
Pair the survey with needs, feedback, participant, and community tools.
Start a broader study with custom questions, scales, branching, and response fields.
Open toolExplore practical needs and priorities alongside sources of social support.
Open toolCollect resident observations about programs, services, access, and local priorities.
Open toolGather the details needed to connect interested people with community services.
Open toolRepeat aligned questions before and after a program to examine response changes.
Open toolLearn how volunteers experience communication, guidance, connection, and program support.
Open toolFAQ
Answers for researchers, social workers, and community teams designing a respectful survey.
It collects structured information about people, groups, or services respondents can rely on and the emotional, practical, informational, or companionship support available. It may also examine received help, unmet needs, and barriers.
Ask about sources, available and received help, frequency or dependability, comfort asking, companionship, belonging, unmet needs, barriers, and optional follow-up. Include nobody, not applicable, and prefer-not-to-answer where appropriate.
Perceived support is the belief that help would be available. Received support was actually provided during a stated period. Measuring both prevents a recent event from standing in for the broader experience.
Source categories such as friend, family, neighbor, peer, or service provider are usually enough. Names may suit a dedicated network study but add privacy considerations. Collect only necessary detail.
Review the instrument's wording, scoring, permissions, population fit, and citation requirements before adding it. Do not present a generated custom survey as validated unless the instrument and its use support that description.
Explain purpose and data use, avoid assuming support exists, make nonessential items optional, provide nonresponse choices, and hide irrelevant follow-ups. Review the plan with appropriate stakeholders.
Yes. Reuse core wording, scales, population rules, and time frames. Add a participant code only when matched responses are necessary and your data plan supports it. Interpret changes with context.
Yes. Makeform is unlimited free for generating, editing, publishing, and collecting responses with your social support survey. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge. You can revise the sample questions, response choices, branching, and follow-up paths before sharing the survey.
Turn support into clear questions.
