Skip logic: a quick start guide

Introduction

Skip Logic, also known as survey routing or branching, allows you to influence the way a respondent progresses through your online survey, depending on their answer to particular questions. This allows you to hide pages that aren't relevant to a particular respondent, or exclude respondents from the rest of the survey if they don't qualify (for example if they live outside the target area).

To do this, you'll need to apply Skip Logic rules to certain pages. These take effect when the page is submitted, and determine the next page the user will see. There are two types of Skip Logic you can apply to a page: conditional or unconditional.

• Conditional rules take the respondent to different destination pages based on how they answer a question on the current page. These rules are useful for hiding pages that don't apply to the respondent.
• Unconditional rules will always take the respondent to the same destination page regardless of their answers on the current page. These rules are useful for making different branches of the survey join together again, so that everyone ends up on the same page at the end.

There is an example survey in our demo site that demonstrates Skip Logic - check it out here.

Building a survey with Skip Logic

In Citizen Space, Skip Logic is designed to be Page Based, meaning that the respondent will not be routed to the next question until they click through to the next page.

Plan and set up your survey

Before you add Skip Logic to your survey, you should:

• Plan your survey: set out all the routes, and identify where you need conditional and unconditional rules. Drawing a flow diagram is often helpful. It's important to note that Skip Logic can only be used in linear surveys, and all rules must direct respondents forward in the survey. 
  • How do I design a survey with Skip Logic?
  • What is the difference between a linear and non-linear survey?
• Choose which questions will be used to control conditional Skip Logic rules. In most cases, it makes sense for the Skip Logic question to appear at the end of a page.  Only certain types of question can be used for conditional Skip Logic.
  • Which question types can be used for conditional skip logic?
• Build your survey as usual: You can edit your survey after you've set up your Skip Logic rules, but we really recommend that you get all the content finalised beforehand, as changes made afterwards might have an impact on the routes.
  • How do I create an online survey?

Adding Skip Logic to your survey

Once you've built your survey, you need to set up your routing by applying skip logic rules.

• How do I add and edit Skip Logic rules?

Test and preview

After adding Skip Logic rules, you should:

• Test your survey thoroughly in preview mode, making sure all possible routes work as expected.
  • How do I preview my survey before publishing it?
  • How do I share a preview link?

Analysing a survey with Skip Logic

Some special considerations should be made when analysing a survey with skip logic, as not all respondents will have seen all questions.

• How do I analyse or report on surveys with skip logic?