date deployed 518 the number of recipients 520 and date closed 522 one of the key elements in a survey is the survey question the survey question can be constructed in various different types of question formats referring to fig6 general purpose objects 502 include a list of a plurality of different types of question and answer formats that can be used in a survey these formats include choice questions 602 multiple choice questions 604 pull down questions 606 matrix questions 608 constant sum questions 610 comment questions 612 spinner questions 614 ranking questions 616 importance satisfaction questions 618 rating questions 619 yes no questions 620 and slide bar questions 622 the general purpose objects 502 further include a survey title 624 respondent names 626 contact information 628 and submit buttons 630 these general purpose objects represent standard objects used in web based surveys fig7 illustrates a preferred embodiment of a method 700 for creating designing and deploying a web based survey the method 700 includes a step 702 in which a user from a survey design machine 108 accesses the web server 404 of the host machine 100 in a step 704 the user decides whether to create a new survey if the user decides to create a new survey the survey creation engine 402 is called in a step 706 otherwise in a step 705 the user decides whether to open a saved survey the user decides in a step.