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Survey Series Comparison

The Survey Series Comparison tool lets admins compare results from multiple surveys that belong to the same series. Instead of reviewing each survey in isolation, you can place them side by side to identify trends, shifts in sentiment, and which questions showed the most change over time.

2 min readUpdated June 23, 2026

Audience: Admins only

What Is a Survey Series?

A survey series is a group of related surveys — typically the same survey sent to your team at different points in time (for example, quarterly engagement surveys or monthly pulse checks). Because the questions repeat across surveys in a series, the comparison tool can line up matching questions and show how answers evolved.

The eNPS template in the Create Survey flow automatically creates a series with admin-configurable cadence (Monthly, Quarterly, or Custom). See the Surveys (including eNPS) article for setup. Any custom survey series — created manually or by converting an existing survey to an eNPS series — also works with this comparison tool.

Accessing the Comparison View

  1. Sign in as an admin and navigate to Insights → Surveys.
  2. Find a survey series in the list.
  3. Tap the series name or the Compare option to open the Series Comparison page.

Using the Comparison Tool

Once you're on the comparison page:

  1. Select surveys to compare — Use the survey selector bar at the top to choose which surveys from the series you want to include. You can select two or more.
  2. Review matched questions — Give River automatically finds questions that appear in multiple selected surveys and displays them in Comparison Question Cards.
  3. Each card shows the same question answered across the surveys you selected, so you can see how responses changed.

What You'll See

Element Description
Survey Selector Bar Dropdown or toggle to choose which surveys to include in the comparison
Comparison Question Cards Side-by-side view of a matched question across selected surveys
Response data Aggregated answers for each survey in the comparison

States and Edge Cases

The comparison view handles several scenarios:

  • No surveys in the series yet — A message indicates there are no surveys to compare.
  • No surveys selected — Prompt to select at least one survey to begin.
  • No common questions found — Shown when the selected surveys don't share any matching questions (e.g., if survey content changed significantly).
  • Comparisons available — The standard view showing all matched question cards.

Chart Scaling

Comparison charts now snap their y-axis to a multiple of 5, with matching tick intervals across the compared occurrences. Practical effect: small differences look less dramatic than they did with auto-scaled axes, and two side-by-side charts are visually comparable without mental math on different scales.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of Comparisons

  • Run the same survey template each period to maximize the number of matched questions in the comparison.
  • Use the date labels on each card to track which survey results correspond to which time period.
  • Look for questions where responses shifted significantly — those often signal meaningful changes in team sentiment or culture.
  • Pair survey comparison data with the Engagement tab in Insights for a fuller picture of what's driving changes.

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