Skip and Display Logic: The Basics
About Skip and Display Logic
QUESTIONSTAR gives you two powerful features you can use to tailor the flow of your survey and respond precisely to your respondents' answers:
- Skip Logic — to skip specific questions or pages
- Display Logic — to show individual questions or pages only under certain conditions
Both tools help you make your survey more relevant, shorter and more focused — and thereby improve data quality, since respondents only see the questions that are genuinely relevant to them.
Skip Logic — targeted routing
With Skip Logic you define which page respondents are routed to, depending on a particular answer given on the current page. In other words: when leaving the page with the question, QUESTIONSTAR checks whether a defined branch should take effect.
Typical use cases:
- Respondents who aren't interested in a particular product skip the entire block of questions about it.
- Only applicants see questions about training — existing employees are automatically routed to the next relevant section.
- People who choose Option A land on a different survey page than those who select Option B.
Skip logic is especially useful when entire pages or sections are to be skipped — that is, for broader control of the survey flow.
Example:
In the first question, respondents indicate whether they use the product as a private customer or as a business customer.
Depending on their choice, they're routed to different pages:
– Private customers answer questions about everyday usability. (Several pages)
– Business customers get questions about integration, scalability and support. (Several pages)
→ Skip logic ensures that everyone sees only the block of questions relevant to them.
Display Logic — targeted visibility
Display Logic, by contrast, is used to control whether a particular question or page is shown at all — based on one or more previous answers.
Typical use cases:
- An additional text input question appears only if "Other" was selected earlier.
- A reason is only asked for if the rating was negative.
- An entire block of pages is shown only if the person belongs to a particular target group.
Display logic is ideal when you want to show or hide individual questions or pages depending on context — that is, for finer control within the survey.
Example:
On one page, respondents indicate which areas of knowledge they're familiar with. For each area of knowledge there's a separate page asking for further details. Using display logic, you define a condition for each of these pages: "Only show this page if the corresponding area of knowledge was selected earlier." If the area wasn't selected, the associated page is automatically skipped and not shown to the respondent.
What's the difference?
| Skip Logic | Display Logic | |
|---|---|---|
| Effect | Controls which page the respondent is routed to | Controls whether a question/page is visible |
| Timing | Takes effect when leaving the page | Takes effect when answering the question / loading the page |
| Ideal for | Skipping larger sections | Showing individual questions or pages conditionally |
| Example | If A → straight to page X | If A → question/page Y is shown |
In short:
– If you want to skip longer blocks of questions — especially when they span several pages — use Skip Logic.
– If you want to show or hide individual questions or pages in a targeted way, use Display Logic.