How can you use skip logic and branching in survey design?

1 What is skip logic?

Skip logic is a technique that allows you to skip or hide certain questions based on the respondents' previous answers. For example, if you ask a respondent whether they have used your product or service, and they answer no, you can skip the questions that ask about their satisfaction, feedback, or loyalty. This way, you can save time and resources, and avoid asking irrelevant or inappropriate questions that might annoy or offend your respondents.

2 What is branching?

Branching is a technique that allows you to direct respondents to different sets of questions based on their previous answers. For example, if you ask a respondent about their gender, and they answer female, you can direct them to a set of questions that are specific to female respondents. This way, you can collect more relevant and detailed data, and create a more personalized and engaging survey experience.

3 What are the benefits of skip logic and branching?

Skip logic and branching can help you improve the quality and efficiency of your surveys by reducing the survey length and complexity, increasing the survey relevance and accuracy, and enhancing the survey engagement and satisfaction. By using skip logic or branching, you can reduce the number of questions each respondent has to answer, making the survey more focused and concise. This can improve response rate, completion rate, and data quality. Additionally, it ensures each respondent only sees relevant questions, increasing validity and reliability of data while reducing bias and error rate. Furthermore, it creates a more interactive and customized survey experience for each respondent, increasing their engagement and satisfaction, as well as trust and loyalty of customers.

4 What are the challenges of skip logic and branching?

Skip logic and branching can also pose some challenges and risks for your survey design, such as increasing the survey design and testing time due to the need to design and test multiple scenarios and paths. This can also decrease the comparability and analysis of your data, reducing the number of responses for each question. Furthermore, you need to be mindful of confusing or frustrating your respondents with unexpected or unclear transitions, jumps, or loops in your survey, which can affect the usability and accessibility of your survey. Ultimately, this can have a negative impact on the response quality and satisfaction of your respondents.

5 What are some best practices for skip logic and branching?

Skip logic and branching are powerful survey design techniques that can help you create more relevant, accurate, and engaging surveys. To use them effectively and efficiently, you should plan your survey objectives and structure beforehand, use them sparingly and strategically, and test them thoroughly and repeatedly. Mapping out the paths and scenarios for your survey can help you identify the key questions and variables that will trigger the skip logic and branching. It is also important to avoid creating too many or too complex paths and scenarios, to keep your survey as simple as possible. Testing your skip logic and branching from different perspectives can ensure that respondents can complete your survey smoothly. By following these best practices, you can improve the quality and efficiency of your surveys.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?