Skip and branching logic
Skip (sometimes called branching logic) can change the flow of the survey for different participants based on their responses to a question. You can apply skip logic to any Yes-No or Multi-choice question types in a custom question group.
For example, if a participant selects 'Yes' to the question 'Do you use Public Transport?' the next group of questions the participant will be asked should be about public transport. If the participant selects 'No', then they will skip to the end of the survey as the public transport questions would not be relevant to them.
You can direct the participant to any group and question (that hasn't already been asked) or to the end of the survey based on their response.
Why should I use skip logic?
- Saves time: By changing the survey flow to include only questions that are relevant to the participant you can reduce the time it takes for them to complete the survey.
- Keeps survey participants engaged: When participants are asked many questions that do not apply to them, they can quickly start to wonder ‘what is the point of me taking this survey?’ and drop out before completing the survey.
- Improves the accuracy of survey results: By changing the survey flow to include only questions that are relevant to the participant, the results will be more accurate. You can direct your questions to participants who are informed about particular topics and reduce the number of participants guessing or selecting ‘Don’t Know’.
How do I set up skip logic?
First, enter your groups of questions and think about how you would like your survey to flow. You may like to draw a quick sketch of your question groups and the survey flow before you start setting it up in the system.
Skip logic comes in two kinds. You can send people different ways based on what they answer, or based on who they are. A single rule can use both at once.
Based on what they answer
To set up skip logic on a Yes/No question:
- Go to the survey Questions step. Select the Yes/No question you want to apply skip logic to and open the question card.
- Select the Skip logic tab at the top right-hand side of the card.
- The first line of a rule reads Selected response is. Choose the response that should trigger it, either Yes or No, or one or more options on a multi-choice question.
- Under Go to, choose the group that holds the participant's next question, or choose End of survey if there is nothing further you want them to answer.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the other response option.
- If no skip logic is applied to a response option, participants will continue to the next question listed.
- Select Save. A description of the skip logic you've applied will now show underneath the question card.
Based on who they are
As well as branching on what somebody answers, you can branch on their demographics: their department, their location, or any demographic on the survey. There are two places to do this.
Where participants start
At the top of the Questions step is a strip reading Where participants start. By default everybody begins at the first question. Open it and select + Add logic to send some people somewhere else before they have answered anything.
For example, everybody in Christchurch could start at a group of questions about the Christchurch office, while everybody else starts at question one.
Rules are tried in order and the first one that fits wins, so the numbers beside them matter. Anyone no rule names starts at the first question.
Narrowing a rule on an answer
A rule that already reads an answer can be narrowed by a demographic. On the question's Skip logic tab, select the + at the end of the rule. A second line appears reading Their demographic is; choose the demographic and the values it should match.
The rule can then say "answered No and in Finance", or "answered No or in Finance", using the and/or control between the two lines.
A rule can name as many demographics as you like, one per demographic.
If the Where participants start strip is not on your Questions step, your account does not have this yet.
Previewing survey skip logic
A strip across the top of the Questions step draws your survey as a flow, and updates as you edit.
Select Expand on that strip to open the full picture, where you can follow one path at a time.
On the left of the expanded view is a list of every rule in the survey, grouped under the question it is about. Select Show this flow on any rule to light up the path a participant takes when that rule fires.
The strip warns you when a question cannot be reached, for example "1 unreachable question". A question becomes unreachable when every route past it skips it, which usually means a rule points somewhere unintended. Select Expand to see which question it is.
How skip logic affects reporting
If your survey has AI-enabled for reporting, this will generate:
- an overall summary of your results on the Insights Dashboard, and
- question and topic summaries in the Text Analysis report (if the survey included free-text questions).
These summaries focus only on the responses collected for a question. They do not account for the number of participants who skipped a question or the broader impact of skip logic.
Based on what they answer
Yes-No Example:
Your survey includes the following branching logic:
Question: "Have you experienced remote work challenges?"
- Yes → Participants who answer "Yes" see the follow-up question: "What specific challenges did you face while working remotely?"
- No → Participants who answer "No" skip the follow-up question.
In this scenario, if 50% of participants answered "No", they would not see the follow-up question about specific challenges. The summary generated by AI will only analyse the responses from the 50% who answered "Yes" and provided details on their challenges.
This means the Insights Dashboard summary might highlight the most common remote work challenges (like "Difficulty collaborating online" or "Internet connectivity issues") without reflecting that these insights are based on only half of all participants.
Multi-choice example
Question: "Which of the following best describes your role?" with options Manager, Individual contributor, Contractor.
- Manager → Participants who select "Manager" see the follow-up question: "How many direct reports do you have?"
- Individual contributor or Contractor → Participants who select either of these skip the follow-up.
Because not every participant answers the follow-up, the report for "How many direct reports do you have?" only reflects scores for managers. Keep that in mind when comparing response counts to the parent question.
Because the group that saw the follow-up is defined by their answer, there is no way to tell from the report who they were. You know 50% answered Yes, not which departments they came from.
Based on who they are
When a rule reads a demographic instead of an answer, the people who see a question are a group you already know the name of. That changes three things.
The question's results are that group's results. Say you send everybody in Finance to a group of questions about budgeting, and nobody else sees them. The report for "I have the budget I need" is not a survey-wide result. It is Finance's result, and should be read that way even though nothing on the report says "Finance" beside it.
Filtering by another demographic shows nothing, and that is correct. On the same survey, filter the report by Department = Sales and the budgeting questions show no responses. Nothing has gone wrong. Sales were never asked them.
A small group may not report at all. Your survey has a minimum number of responses before results are shown, and it applies to the group the rule selected. If only four people in Finance answered and your minimum is five, those questions stay hidden, even though every single person who was asked replied.
A worked example. A 200-person survey. A rule sends the 12 people in Finance to a group of three budgeting questions. Everybody else goes straight past them.
- 10 of the 12 answer. The budgeting questions report on 10 responses, not 200, and those 10 are all from Finance.
- Filter by Department = Operations and the budgeting questions are empty.
- Raise the minimum reporting threshold to 15 and the budgeting questions disappear from the report entirely.
- The AI summary for those questions describes Finance's view of budgets. It will not say so, because it only sees the responses it was given.
So when using skip logic and reviewing AI insights, keep in mind summaries will be accurate for the responses received but may not represent the experiences of the entire participant group.
FAQs
Can I use skip logic on all question types?
Skip logic based on what they answer works on Yes-No and Multi-choice questions. For Yes-No, the skip is triggered by the Yes or No answer. For Multi-choice, you pick one or more options that trigger it. For example, "if the participant selects 'Engineering' from a department list, show a follow-up question about engineering-specific tools."
Some accounts can also branch on 0-3, 0-5 and 0-6 scale questions. If you do not see the Skip logic tab on those, your account does not have it. It is not available for free text, Agree-Disagree or 0-10 questions.
Skip logic based on who they are does not need a question at all, because it reads a participant's demographics rather than an answer.
Does skip logic come across when I duplicate a survey?
Yes. A duplicate carries the demographics the survey was built around, as long as they are still in your demographics library, and the rules that name them come across too.
A rule is left behind only when it cannot be copied exactly: if the demographic it names, or one of the options it names, has been removed from your library since. The window that opens when you select Duplicate tells you which rules those are, before anything is created.
Does skip logic come across on a retest?
No. A retest keeps the ten lowest scoring questions and drops every rule, whatever your library still holds. The window that opens when you select Create retest says so before anything is created.
Can I filter reports by responses to a question?
Yes. That's a separate but related feature called the response filter. Where skip logic decides which questions a participant sees at survey time, the response filter decides which participants you look at in the report. The filter is set in the survey reports portal alongside the demographic filter and applies across the survey's reports.
For example, on a survey with a "Which department do you work in?" multi-choice question with a skip logic, you can apply a response filter to see how only the Engineering respondents answered the rest of the survey.
Response filters are available for Agree-Disagree, 0-10, NPS, Yes-No, and Multi-choice questions.
What you can filter by also depends on whether the survey is anonymous:
- Anonymous surveys with skip logic: you can only filter by the response to the question that has skip logic on it. This protects respondent anonymity by leveraging the existing skip-logic sub-populations, and the minimum reporting threshold still applies.
- Non-anonymous surveys: you can filter by the response to any supported question, regardless of whether it has skip logic. You can also export the full responses of individual respondents in non-anonymous surveys.