Question logic is a highly effective way to improve the flow of your survey and tailor it to make it relevant to respondents. It allows you to specify which question to show or hide, or even skip to the end of the survey, based on the answer to a preceding inquiry, quiz score, or contact data.
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This guide will teach you:
- How does it work?
- Add a new rule
- Write rule using answer on question criteria
- Write rule with other criteria
Question Logic does not work with Ranking, XY Drag and Drop, and Typeahead Form questions.
1. How does it work?
The way to build a logic rule is by first specifying your criteria (IF) and then specify what action should be taken (THEN).
Let us talk through the example displayed in the image below to make this clearer. IF the respondent chooses answer A, younger than 35, THEN he is asked an inquiry about this group and afterwards continue with the rest of the survey. IF the respondent chooses answer B, older than 35, THEN he is asked two inquiries and continues with the survey.
When you are building your rule, you can choose your criteria (IF) from any of the following items (or a combination of these items):
- Answer on question
- Response on intro field
- Custom score
- Quiz score
- Language
- Contacts
- Formula (Enterprise/ReportR plans)
When these criteria are matched, specify what action will be taken (THEN). The actions can be chosen from the following list:
- Skip to question
- Skip to end
- Hide questions (Professional & up)
- Hide answers (Enterprise/ReportR plans)
- Show following answers (Professional & up)
- Make question mandatory (Enterprise/ReportR plans)
- Add to formula (Enterprise/ReportR plans)
So, now that we covered the theory, let's see how to put it into practice.
2. Add a new rule
Start by going to the Extra Options tab. Then, click Question logic.
Click Create rule and you will now see the screen below. Notice how you first specify your IF criteria, and THEN you specify what should happen.
Question Logic View: If you want to view the rules in the editor, toggle the question logic view button.
Once you've created your rules, when you return to the editor, you'll see a description of the rule above each of your inquiries, looking like this:
Rules are shown on the left if the inquiry has a rule applied to it, for example, skip to this question if answer on question 1 is equal to (inbound).
Rules are shown on the right if a rule has been made for that inquiry. (outbound)
3. Write rule using 'answer on question' criteria
3.1 Build the IF part of the rule
3.1 Build the IF part of the rule
Start by selecting the first choice: answer on question. This allows you to specify which inquiry you want to be answered a certain way in order to activate the rule. Now you can choose the inquiry you want to use for this rule. Any inquiries that are grayed out cannot be selected as the question format is not compatible with creating a rule.
Let's create a rule that is based on the answers to question 1. Whoever selected 5 stars will skip to the end of the survey. This way, anyone who was not totally satisfied will be shown an extra inquiry asking for more details.
When you have selected answer on question, you have to specify when the rule should be applied. It can be applied if the answer is equal to a specific value, not equal to a specific value, greater than or many more options that you'll see on the drop-down menu.
If you want to create a few rules with the same criteria, why not save time and just click copy rule at the top of the logic box to duplicate what you've done? This way all the work you've done will be copied and you can simply make some minor changes for each rule rather than having to do everything from scratch for each rule.
If you're on the Professional, Enterprise, or ReportR plan, you'll see an orange square button with a + sign which allows you to add more rules. For example, skip to a certain inquiry when 2 conditions are met.
If you have a multiple-choice inquiry, you must add extra specifications to your conditions. For example, if you want the logic applied only when answer 1 is chosen, and not answers 2 and 3, the first part of the condition will state that answer must be equal to answer 1. Then click the + sign to add conditions (AND) that the answer should not be equal to answer 2 AND not equal to answer 3.
3.2 Define what happens THEN
Now it's time to specify what happens THEN. Click Select and you'll see the menu of possible options. If you choose skip to question, you'll then be able to select the question you want to send respondents to, when the IF criteria is met.
4. Write logic rule with other criteria
Now you know the basics of creating a rule. Let's have a look at other ways you can create the IF criteria.
4.2 Contacts
4.1 Custom/Quiz score
There are three types of custom/quiz scores you can use for the IF criteria:
- Custom/score on questionnaire - takes a specific action depending on custom/quiz score received on your questionnaire
- Custom/Quiz score on question block - takes a specific action depending on custom/quiz score received for a specified block
- Custom/Quiz score on question - takes a specific action depending on the custom/quiz score received for just a single question
Click the arrow to access the drop-down menu of options.
If you want the logic rule to be applied to the custom/quiz score received for a block or specific question, you will be given the option to choose which block or question.
Next, for all three types of quiz scores, you will be able to choose what the score should be, from a whole range of options including equal to, greater than, between and others.
Once you have specified all the conditions for the IF criteria, now choose what action should be taken (THEN). For example, you might want respondents who score very high or very low on a certain inquiry to skip to the end of the survey.
4.2 Contacts
One final way to build your IF criteria can be based on the contact data. This can be any of the following data: email, unique identifier, or personal ID.
For example, you may want to hide an inquiry to a specific respondent, so if you have sent them a survey with a personalized link (by email invitation with a customized link), you can make a rule that this respondent will not see a certain inquiry.
You can build the rule in exactly the same way as we have seen so far. First specify your IF criteria, here it will be an email address contains a certain name, and then specify what happens THEN (skip to question number, skip to end, hide question, etc).
Click Apply to save the rule you've created. Make sure to also click save changes in your survey - the apply for question logic doesn't count as a full save.
What's next?
- If you're on the Enterprise or ReportR plan, you can add a value to formula with question logic, to show outcomes based on formula results when a certain condition is met. This can be done on a specific answer to a question, on a custom score on a question block, or even an intro field.
- Use question types that support custom scoring to give a score to each answer, so that an overall score will be calculated at the end of the survey. Not all question types support this feature by default, however you can use formulas to add custom score to your forms, open ended and ranking inquiries.
- Outcomes is a feature that allows you to select what you will show to your respondents as a final screen, based on their answers to all inquiries or show a screen based on criteria that you have specified, such as a specific quiz score. This feature offers the possibility to create personality quizzes and business tests that end with personalised advice.