Which questions do you ask participants in advance? An intake form for lessons and activities

What does your instructor or teacher need to know before the lesson starts? Each participant’s level or experience, the size of their equipment, an emergency contact and what matters for safety about their health. Ask about health separately and with explicit consent; whatever can wait, ask after the booking.

What do you ask for each type of activity?

Start with your instructor or teacher. Which answers do they really use on the day? That gives a short list for each type of business.

Type of activity	At booking	After booking
Workshop studio	experience with the technique	dietary needs at lunch, left- or right-handed
Surf or sailing school	level, swimming ability	wetsuit size, height and weight for board or boat
Dive school	certification and number of dives	size of wetsuit and fins
Outdoor with rental	experience, age when there is a minimum age	shoe size, height for bike or canoe
Team building	number of participants, company name	colleagues’ names, dietary needs

Every activity adds two questions to that. A date of birth, when you have a minimum age or a parent has to sign. And an emergency contact with a phone number, in case something goes wrong on the water or in the woods.

Can you ask participants about their health?

You can, with explicit consent. Health data is a special category of personal data. In the Netherlands, article 22 of the GDPR Implementation Act (Uitvoeringswet AVG) prohibits processing it, with a few exceptions. One of them is that the participant gives explicit consent for one or more specific purposes.

In practice that means three things:

1. Say why you ask. For example: “so your instructor knows what to do if you get asthma in the water”.
2. Ask one open question. A list of conditions asks for more than you need. With an open question the participant names what matters.
3. Keep it apart. A health note belongs to the participant and only the office and the person teaching them can read it.

A dive school often works with a fixed medical questionnaire from its training organisation. Use that, and keep in your booking system only what the instructor needs to know on the day. With a waiver the participant then confirms that what they told you is correct.

Do you ask everything at booking?

At booking, ask what decides whether the booking fits: level, age or swimming ability. Every extra question makes the form longer at the moment the guest wants to pay.

Sizes, dietary needs and colleagues’ names come after the booking. Send one message with a link for it and say when you need the answers, for example a week before the start. Your team then has them in time to split groups and lay out equipment.

Who may read the answers?

The office reads everything. The instructor reads what they need for their lesson, for the participants in their own group. A colleague on another lesson that day has no need to see those answers.

Keep health notes out of lists and exports the whole team sees. Show them where the instructor has the participant in front of them, such as their participant list for the day. Delete answers you no longer need after the lesson, certainly when a guest asks.

How do participant questions work in Superota?

You put together your own questions per activity. A question can ask for a short or long open answer, offer one choice or several, or ask for a number, a date or yes or no. You choose whether it applies to each participant or to the person who books, and whether the guest answers when booking or later in their guest portal. You write the question text per language. Questions from another activity can be copied in one go.

Four switches decide who sees what:

Switch	What it does
Required	the guest has to answer, when booking or in their guest portal; a missing answer shows on the booking as a point to check
Visible to the staff member	the instructor sees the answers of the participants they work with
Sensitive	lists and exports only show that there is an answer; the guest does not see it again in their guest portal
Only the office	the guest never sees the question; the office fills in the answer

A choice can point to a skill, for example sailing or windsurfing. When a guest picks windsurfing, Superota ranks staff members who can teach windsurfing higher when it suggests who to assign.

Health goes into the medical notes, which the booking form already asks for each participant. The office’s participant list only shows a tick that a note exists, and the top of the booking says to inform the staff member. The staff member teaching the lesson reads the full note in their app. The guest can add to it in their guest portal. Their text goes below the existing notes with the date, and they do not see earlier notes again.

Each answer keeps the question as the guest read it, also when you change the text later. Answers to questions you no longer ask are deleted from the booking in one go.

Which question do you drop first?

This week, put your form next to the participant list of an ordinary lesson day. Tick every question whose answer your instructor used that day. Whatever has no tick can go. Then ask your team what they missed on the beach or in the studio and add that.