Conditional Branching

The advantage of the Conditional Branching is that it creates a custom path based on respondent's answers. The following is an introduction of the Conditional Branching with several examples.

Conditional Branching is a powerful function that allows you to direct respondents to different branches upon different choices and applies to the following:

  1. Questions with various types of response
  2. Surveys using various criteria

Since Conditional Branching are logic-based, it is recommended to list all possible questions first. Conditional Branching can then be applied multiple questions, and the selected questions will be hidden during a survey preview.

Example 1: In a survey designed to understand the mediums through which internet users arrive at webpages before making purchases, each option will be related to its branched question group.

Question set up with Conditional Branching based on the respondent's chosen shopping channel
Settings screen for selecting an option and checking which extended questions it branches to

The questions belonging to a branch are indicated in the editing page after selection.

Survey editor showing a label indicating the option is branched to a specific question

Hidden questions will appear once the branched option has been chosen.

Demo animation of a respondent selecting a branching option and triggering the hidden question to appear

Example 2: When applying extra criteria to a single survey, such as user status and needs. This application of Conditional Branching assumes that the survey is being distributed to the respondents in the same geographical area, but different age range.

Conditional Branching setup grouping different follow-up questions by the respondent's age range
Settings screen configuring separate branching questions for each age range option

All the hidden questions appear together when the respondent selects several options to which Conditional Branching were applied.

Demo animation of a checkbox question showing multiple hidden question groups appearing together after selecting several branching options

To undo all Conditional Branching settings, simply uncheck the branched questions then click Confirm.

Unchecking branched questions and clicking Confirm to remove Conditional Branching settings

FAQs

  • What is the biggest difference between Skip Logic and Conditional Branching?

The biggest difference between the two features is "whether respondents can see questions configured with skip logic/conditional branching before the logic is triggered".

  • Conditional Branching

Suppose option B of question 1 in a survey has conditional branching configured, which will branch to question 2.

When respondents enter the survey, if they do not select option B (which has conditional branching configured), question 2 will be hidden by default and respondents cannot see it; only when respondents select option B will it trigger and display the originally hidden question 2.

Diagram illustrating how Conditional Branching keeps a question hidden until its branching option is selected
  • Skip Logic

Suppose option A of question 1 in a survey has skip logic configured, which will skip question 2 and jump to question 3.

When respondents enter the survey, even if they do not select option A (which has skip logic configured) in question 1, they will still directly see all questions (including question 2 that would originally be skipped); only after selecting option A will question 2 be skipped.

Diagram illustrating how Skip Logic still shows all questions until the skip option is selected
  • Why do questions appear even when I select an option without conditional branching set? (As shown below: In Question 2, only the "Yes" option has conditional branching set to Question 4, but Question 4 also appears when selecting "No")
FAQ diagram showing Question 4 incorrectly appearing even when an unbranched option is selected

In this case, you can go back to earlier questions to check if there are any mistakenly configured conditional branching settings.

For example: After checking back, you discover that Question 1 has conditional branching set to Question 4, which is why Question 4 appears regardless of which option is selected in Question 2.

Survey editor showing Question 1 mistakenly branched to Question 4

In this case, remove the conditional branching from Question 1 to solve this problem!

  • Why do other questions appear when an option is only set to branch to specific questions? (As shown below: The "No" option in Question 2 is only set to branch to Questions 6-8, but Questions 4-5 also appear)
FAQ diagram showing Questions 4-5 appearing even though the option is only branched to Questions 6-8

In this case, you can check earlier questions to confirm whether every subsequent question has conditional branching set. If some questions do not have conditional branching set, these questions will be displayed in the survey by default.

Using the image below as an example: This situation may occur because Questions 4-5 were never set to branch from any option from the beginning, so Questions 4-5 appear directly in the survey regardless of which option is selected in Question 2.

In this case, simply go back to Question 2 and check that all options have conditional branching correctly set!

Question 2 options being checked to confirm each has Conditional Branching correctly configured
Summary

Conditional Branching provides a logical method for organizing specific question sets, and saves screen space while adding depth and accuracy to surveys!

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