The steps to creating a survey using Google docs forms are well documented already. Therefore, I’ll just point you to some good step-by-step directions and then fill in with how to distribute the survey, view the responses and close the survey.
About.com has a good step-by-step procedure for creating the questions here.
After you have created the questions and clicked the Save button you may want to change the thank you screen before distributing the survey.
Changing the Thank You screen
The default message that is displayed to a survey-taker when they have completed the survey is:
Thanks! Your response will now appear in my spreadsheet.
To change that message, edit the form and select More Actions/Edit Confirmation
Distributing the survey
You can distribute the survey by emailing it, either from within the Google form or from your own email client. If you send it from Google anything you have written in the Description field will be included in the text of the email. If you send it from your own email you can customize the invitation text. Either way you must enter the email addresses of the people you want to receive the form.
You can also embed the survey in a web or blog page.
To make the survey available via email from within Google:
Edit the form. Click the Email this form menu option at the top of the form.
To send the survey from your email client:
Obtain the url for the survey. It is listed at the bottom of the form when you are editing the form.
Include this url in the body of your email.
To embed the survey in a web page:
Get the embed code by clicking More Actions / Embed
Press Control-V to copy the code that is displayed.
Insert this code into your web page in html mode.
View the results
The survey form creates a spreadsheet that collects the data. You can view the results on the spreadsheet by clicking on the spreadsheet in your google docs listing. You can also export the spreadsheet to an excel document.
You can view a graphical summary of the data by clicking Form / Show summary of responses
It creates output like this:
Closing a Survey form
When you want to stop accepting responses to your survey you can turn it off.
In the spreadsheet, click on the Form menu option. Then click Accepting responses.
The checkmark is removed showing that the form is no longer accepting response.
Anyone accessing the form will get this generic message:
See some examples of how people have used Google surveys here.