SurveyMonkey

In this article

Video Overview
Survey Requirements
Adding Advanced Branching
Using Multiple Rules
Conditions & Actions
Managing Existing Rules
Previewing & Testing Rules
Analyzing Your Results
Common Questions

Creating Surveys

Applying Logic

Advanced Branching

SurveyMonkey

Advanced Branching

Video Overview
Survey Requirements
Adding Advanced Branching
Using Multiple Rules
Conditions & Actions
Managing Existing Rules
Previewing & Testing Rules
Analyzing Your Results
Common Questions

PAID FEATURE: Advanced branching is only available on some paid plans—see what's on your plan.

Advanced Branching lets you customize the behavior of your survey based on multiple conditions and it's one of our most powerful logic features.

Build conditions based on a respondent's answers, custom data from Contacts, custom variables, or survey language. When the criteria you define in your conditions are met, you can skip respondents to future points in your survey, show or hide questions, show or hide pages, or invalidate questions and customize the error message.
Add unconditional skip logic to a page, so that everyone that reaches that page is skipped to a specific page later in the survey.

For example, you can have respondents select only the products they’ve purchased from a list of options and then show them follow up questions relevant to those products while hiding the follow up questions on products they didn’t purchase. Or, you can disqualify respondents who answer a series of questions in a certain way, so you can screen out respondents that aren't relevant to your survey's goals.

TIP! It's best to apply Advanced Branching after your survey design is finalized.

Video Overview

Survey Requirements

Before adding Advanced Branching to your survey, it's helpful to understand what data you can base conditions on, and what collector types you'll need to use in order for everything to work smoothly.

Data	Description	Compatible Collector Types
Questions	Any question type except Text, Image, Click Map, Text A/B Test, Question A/B test, and Image A/B Test. For questions with multiple rows, you can specify the row you want to base your condition on.	All collector types
Contact Data	The custom data about your respondents that's stored in Contacts. For example: Email, First Name, Last Name, Custom 1, etc.	Email Invitation
Custom Variables	The values of the custom variables in the survey URL.	Web Link
Survey Language (in Beta)	The language the survey taker takes the survey in.	All collector types

Adding Advanced Branching

Image of how to apply multiple rules. Shows advanced branching logic tab that includes two rules and an option to add another. There is an option to choose a page to go to after rules.

To add Advanced Branching to your survey:

In the Design Survey section, go to the page you want to add logic to.
Click Page Logic at the top of the page.
Choose Advanced branching logic.
Click + NEW RULE.
Define the conditions and actions for this rule. You can add more rules after you save this one.
Click Save Rule.
Click Apply.

TIP! If you add more than one rule, review the Using Multiple Rules section below for more information.

Using Multiple Rules

Types of Rules

The Advanced Branching Logic tab is split into two sections where you can set up the three different types of rules.

Section	Rule Type	Description
Advanced branching rules	Advanced Branching Rule	A rule composed of a condition and an action.
Advanced branching rules	Conditional Skip Rule	A rule composed of a condition and a branching action, specifically. Find a full list of actions in the Conditions & Actions section.
If no other skip rules apply, proceed to this page...	Unconditional Skip Rule	An unconditional rule composed of an action only.

Order of Rules and Conflicts
When a respondent submits a page in your survey, all the rules on that page are evaluated in order from top to bottom. If you use multiple types of rules together, the following hierarchy applies:

Advanced Branching Rule > Conditional Skip Rule > Unconditional Skip Rule

If two or more rules of the same type conflict with one another, we take action on the first rule in the list, and ignore any subsequent rules that conflict with it.
Using Advanced Branching with Question Skip Logic
While you can use Question Skip Logic and Advanced Branching on the same survey, we suggest using Advanced Branching exclusively so you can manage all of your logic in one place and better avoid conflicts.
If you do use Advanced Branching and Question Skip Logic together, and there's a conflict between the two types of logic, the following hierarchy applies:

Advanced Branching Rule > Conditional Skip Rule > Question Skip Logic > Unconditional Skip Rule.

For example, if you have an Advanced Branching Rule and Question Skip Logic based on the exact same condition, the Advanced Branching Rule takes precedence.

Conditions & Actions

Creating rules is as easy as creating logical sentences based on questions in your survey, or information about your respondent. Every rule is made up of two parts: a condition and an action.

You can build rules based on the following subjects. Keep in mind that some subjects will only work when you use a certain collector type to send your survey.

Conditions

Conditions define the fields you want to base the rule on, and how you want us to evaluate those fields. Conditions are made up of three parts:

Part	Description	Example
Subject	The data you want to base the rule on.	Q4: What is your age?
Operator	Tells us how to evaluate the subject's value to make the condition true. You can use several different operators to define the relationship between the subject and the value.	is one of
Value	The value of the subject you're basing the rule on. This could be the answer choice the respondent selected, the open-ended response they type into your survey, or the data that we know about them already from Contacts, Custom Variables, or survey language.	17 or younger 18-20 21-29

Adding Multiple Conditions to a Rule
You can add multiple conditions to a rule and use the Boolean operators OR or AND to define the relationship between the conditions.

Within a single advanced branching rule, you can either use all AND operators, or all OR operators—you can't mix and match.

The NOT Boolean operator is not available.

Actions

Actions define what the survey should do if the conditions are met.

There are two types of actions: Branching Actions and Other Actions. Branching Actions let you skip respondents to a later point in the survey when the conditions of your rule are met. Other Actions let you show or hide questions and pages, or invalidate questions when certain conditions are met.

Rule Type	Action	Description
Branching Action	Skip to page	Skip the respondent to a future page in your survey.
Branching Action	Exit block	Skip the respondent to the next available block, if Block Randomization applied. If a block is not available, the respondent will skip to the next available page.
Branching Action	End survey	Skip the respondent to the Survey End Page option. The response is marked as COMPLETE when you view their individual response
Branching Action	Disqualify respondent	Skip the respondent to the disqualification page that you select in the collector options. The response is marked as DISQUALIFIED when you view their individual response.
Other Actions	Hide question	Hide a question on a future page in the survey. Questions are shown until the conditions are met.
Other Actions	Show question	Show a question on a future page in the survey. Questions are hidden until the conditions are met.
Other Actions	Hide page	Hide a future page in the survey.
Other Actions	Show page	Show a future page in the survey.
Other Actions	Invalidate question	Invalidate any question on a future page, or the current page, and customize the error message that respondents will see when they try to proceed to the next page of the survey.

Managing Existing Rules

To view or edit an existing rule:

Click the advanced branching icon « at the top of a page to view or edit the rules applied to that page.
Click the down arrow to the right of any rule to edit, copy, delete, or move a rule.

You can't copy or move rules to another page in the survey.

TIP! When you save a rule, we convert it into a script. To understand what an existing rule means, you can hover over the script to see what each piece represents.

Previewing & Testing Rules

The best way to test Advanced Branching depends on the subjects you based your rules on.

At this time there's no way to reference advanced branching rules alongside your survey as you test it.

Testing Rules Based on Questions
Testing Rules Based on Custom Data from Contacts
If any of your conditions are based on custom data from Contacts, the best way to test your survey is to create a group in your Contacts and then send an Email Invitation to that group.

When you create a test group, include email addresses that you have access to for testing. When you add custom data to those contacts, make sure that you have a test contact for each persona you based your advanced branching rules on. For example, if you use the Custom 1 field to record each contact's department, and you based advanced branching rules on multiple departments, make sure to create a test contact that represents each department.

When you compose your invitation message, insert custom data tags into the message so you can refer to the set of custom data you're about to test when you receive the email.

After you're done testing, clear and delete the collector to remove the test data from your survey.
Testing Rules Based on Custom Variables
Testing Rules Based on Survey Language

Analyzing Your Results

Your results in the Analyze Results section will look the same as any normal survey. If a respondent was skipped past a question or page due to a branching action, or if a question was hidden from a respondent, the questions they didn't see are marked as skipped in the Analyze Results section.

There's no way to view or export the logic path that a particular respondent took through your survey.

Common Questions

Can I show or hide questions dynamically on the same page?
Will my rules update if I delete or add more questions and pages?
If you delete pages, questions, or answer choices in your survey, advanced branching rules update automatically so you don't need to go back to update them manually. For example, if one of your rules is based on Q1, and then you add a new question before it that becomes the new Q1, the rule will dynamically update to reference Q2 instead.

However, we recommend waiting to apply advanced branching rules until after your survey design is complete. It's easier to apply logic once the organization of your survey is finalized.
Are values case sensitive?
What's the difference between Advanced Branching and Question Skip Logic?

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Getting Started with Forms

SurveyMonkey

Advanced Branching

Video Overview

Survey Requirements

Adding Advanced Branching

Using Multiple Rules

Conditions & Actions

Managing Existing Rules

Previewing & Testing Rules

Analyzing Your Results

Common Questions

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