Skip logic

About skip logic

With skip logic in QUESTIONSTAR, you control exactly which page respondents are sent to after answering a question — depending on how they answered. This lets you skip entire sections, avoid unnecessary questions, and shape the survey flow individually.

Typical scenarios:

• Gauging product interest: Anyone who shows no interest in the product automatically skips the detailed questions about it.
• Applicants vs. employees: Depending on what they select at the start (e.g. "I am…"), respondents see different question blocks.
• Feedback logic: Anyone who rates something as "not relevant" is sent straight to the next appropriate section.
• Pre-qualification / screening: Only certain respondent groups (e.g. from industry X) go through specific question areas.

Skip logic takes effect when leaving the page that holds the decisive question. This makes it especially well suited to coarse steering and skipping entire pages or blocks of pages.

Setting up skip logic

Requirements

For skip logic to work correctly, a few requirements must be met:

1. Define a filter question: There must be a question in the questionnaire whose answer decides which path respondents take from that point on. This so-called filter question forms the basis of the skip logic.

2. Placement of the filter question: Ideally, the filter question should be placed alone on a separate page — or at least stand as the last question on the page in question. The reason: Skip logic only kicks in after the respondent leaves the page that contains the triggering question.

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   Note: If you instead want to dynamically control the visibility of individual questions on the same page, please use display logic.

3. Structuring the survey sections: The content that is to be skipped or run through depending on the filter question must be on one or more separate pages. Only then can QUESTIONSTAR jump specifically to these pages or leave them out — depending on the logic you've defined.

Here's how to set up skip logic:

1. Open the right-hand properties panel of the question that is to trigger the branching.
2. There, click the button "Add Skip Logic". An area then appears below the question where you can configure the branching.
3. Define the condition under which the branching should be triggered. In our example, this is the case when "No" was selected in the filter question.
4. Choose the target page that respondents should be sent to when the defined condition is met.
5. In the question's general settings, enable the "Require response" option. This ensures that the question is answered in any case — and that respondents don't accidentally follow the wrong path through the questionnaire.
6. To remove skip logic that was inserted incorrectly, simply click the bin icon.

Multiple branches and unconditional forwarding

In more complex questionnaires, it can make sense to build in several branches or alternative paths — for example, when different respondent groups are each meant to go through different questions.

If you want to implement such alternative paths in the questionnaire, please keep the following points in mind:

1. Each path should be shown on separate, consecutive pages. This keeps the structure clear and makes it technically unambiguous where the branching leads.

2. On the screening page (i.e. the page with the selection question), the branches must be set up so that they are mutually exclusive. That means: exactly one forwarding rule is defined per answer option — and each rule leads to a different path. A person should only ever be able to follow one path.

   Note: If a respondent is meant to go through several paths at the same time, use display logic instead of skip logic.

3. At the end of each path, an unconditional forwarding must be set up. This ensures that after the path, the questionnaire automatically jumps to the next shared section (or directly to the end of the survey) — regardless of which other paths the questionnaire still contains.

Here's how to set up an unconditional forwarding:

1. Open the page settings of the last page of the path.
2. Click "Add Skip Logic".
3. As the target page, select the page that should be automatically forwarded to after the path is completed (e.g. a shared closing page).

Skip logic for screenouts and alternative end pages

In some cases you may want to exclude certain respondents from your survey entirely — for example, because they don't belong to the target group (a so-called screenout). Or you may want the questionnaire to end at the conclusion of a certain path, with no further questions following.

In such cases, you can set up a special branch and define the alternative end of the survey on the last (or only) page of that path.

Here's how it works:

1. Open the page settings of the relevant page.
2. There, enable the "End survey" option.

As soon as respondents land on this page, the survey ends for them automatically — regardless of how many questions would still follow afterward.