--- title: "Polling and survey glossary" url: "https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/" description: "Plain definitions of the polling and survey terms you meet when you run polls in Slack, each with an example poll." --- # Polling and survey glossary Plain definitions of the polling and survey terms you meet when you run polls in Slack, each with an example poll. ## A - [AMA (ask me anything)](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/ama/): An AMA, short for "ask me anything", is a session where one person or a panel answers open questions from a group, usually with the most popular questions answered first. - [Anonymous poll](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/anonymous-poll/): An anonymous poll records votes without showing who cast them: everyone sees the totals, and nobody can see which person picked which answer. In Simple Poll that includes the person who created the poll. - [Approval voting](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/approval-voting/): Approval voting lets each voter pick every option they find acceptable, as many as they like. The option with the most approvals wins. ## E - [Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/employee-net-promoter-score/): Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) asks employees how likely they are to recommend their company as a place to work, on a scale from 0 to 10. The score is the percentage of promoters (9 or 10) minus the percentage of detractors (0 to 6), so it runs from -100 to +100. ## G - [Gallup Q12](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/gallup-q12/): The Gallup Q12 is Gallup's employee engagement survey: twelve statements that employees rate on a five-point agreement scale, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The items are Gallup's proprietary material. ## L - [Likert scale](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/likert-scale/): A Likert scale measures attitudes by asking people how much they agree with a set of statements, usually on five points from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree". Strictly, one statement is a Likert item, and the scale is several items scored together. ## M - [Multiple-choice poll](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/multiple-choice-poll/): A multiple-choice poll gives voters a fixed list of options to choose from. Depending on the settings, each person can pick one option or several. ## N - [Net Promoter Score (NPS)](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/net-promoter-score/): Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a loyalty metric built on one question: how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague, answered from 0 to 10. NPS is the percentage of promoters (9 or 10) minus the percentage of detractors (0 to 6), so it runs from -100 to +100. ## O - [Open-ended question](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/open-ended-question/): An open-ended question lets people answer in their own words instead of choosing from a list. It surfaces things you didn't think to ask about, at the cost of answers you have to read and group yourself. ## P - [Plurality voting](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/plurality-voting/): Plurality voting gives each voter one vote, and the option with the most votes wins, even if it has less than half of them. In single-winner elections it is also called first-past-the-post. - [Psychological safety](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/psychological-safety/): Psychological safety is "a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking", as Amy Edmondson defined it in 1999. In practice: people can ask, disagree, admit mistakes and raise problems without fear of embarrassment or punishment. - [Pulse survey](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/pulse-survey/): A pulse survey is a short survey, usually one to five questions, sent to the same group on a regular schedule so you can see how things change over time. Common topics are workload, morale and engagement. ## Q - [Quorum](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/quorum/): A quorum is the minimum number of members who must take part, by attending a meeting or by voting, for a group's decision to count. Under Robert's Rules of Order, the default is a majority of the entire membership unless the group's own rules set another number. ## R - [Ranked-choice voting](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/ranked-choice-voting/): Ranked-choice voting asks each voter to put the options in order of preference instead of picking just one. The term usually means instant-runoff counting: the last-placed option is eliminated round by round until one option has a majority. - [Response rate](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/response-rate/): Response rate is the share of people you asked who actually answered: the number of respondents divided by the number of people invited, times 100. - [Retrospective](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/retrospective/): A retrospective is a meeting at the end of a piece of work where the team looks at how it worked, not what it built, and picks changes to try next time. In Scrum it closes every sprint. ## S - [Single-choice poll](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/single-choice-poll/): A single-choice poll lets each voter pick exactly one option. The result shows how a group splits when everyone has to commit to a single answer. - [Slash command](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/slash-command/): A slash command is a message that starts with a forward slash, like `/poll`, and runs an app or a built-in Slack action instead of posting text to the channel. - [Straw poll](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/straw-poll/): A straw poll is an informal, non-binding vote that shows which way a group is leaning before a real decision is made. - [Survey fatigue](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/survey-fatigue/): Survey fatigue is when people are asked for feedback so often, or at such length, that they stop answering or start answering carelessly. --- Simple Poll is the #1 polls and surveys app for Slack. Add it to Slack: https://simplepoll.rocks/. Pricing: https://simplepoll.rocks/pricing/.