SurveyMonkey

Question & Answer Piping

Question and Answer Piping

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Question & Answer Piping allows you to insert, or "pipe," answer text from a previous question into a question on a later page in the survey.

Question & Answer Piping is related to Advanced Piping, which is a more advanced version of the feature that lets you insert custom variables and custom data from Contacts into your survey in addition to answer text from a previous question.

For example, here's how you might set up a survey using Question & Answer Piping:
Page 1, Q1: Single Textbox
In what city do you currently live?

Page 2, Q2: Matrix/Rating Scale
How satisfied are you with the following aspects of {{ Q1 }}?

Public Transportation
Safety
Education
Housing Costs

If the survey taker enters "New York" for Q1, "New York" would replace {{ Q1 }} in the follow-up question. For that specific survey taker, Q2 would then read "How satisfied are you with the following aspects of New York?"

Adding piping requires that you add a sender question, and one or more receiver questions on a later page. A sender question is a question whose answer you want to insert into a later receiver question in the survey. You can pipe the same answer from a sender question up to 4 times in the survey.

Piping is activated when a survey taker clicks Next to go to the next page, so a receiver question can't be on the same page as the associated sender question.

  • Sender Question Types
  • Receiver Question Types

To pipe answer text into a following question:

  1. In the Design Survey section, click the receiver question—the question you want to customize with piped text. This must be a question on a page that comes after the sender question.
  2. Click the question text or answer choice field into which you want to pipe a previous answer, and leave your cursor in the position where you want to insert the piped text.
  3. Click Insert text from.... If there are sender questions that you can pipe from, they will appear in a menu.
  4. Choose the sender question you want to pipe from. This will insert the absolute question number within curly brackets. For example: {{ Q2 }}.

When people take the survey, the bracketed template will be replaced by the respondent's answer to the sender question.

Question and Answer Piping isn't supported when Page Randomization is applied to either the page that contains the sender question, or the page that contains the receiver question.

If you receive an error that prevents you from saving a question with piping, remove the Page Randomization on those pages, or remove the piping from the question.

Piping may not work when applied to an 'Other' answer choice that has been carried forward.

Before you send out your survey, preview your survey design to see what your survey will look like to survey takers.

If a survey taker skips the sender question, the bracketed template won't show in the receiver questions—it's replaced by a blank space. You may want to make the sender question required to avoid incomplete sentences or blank spaces.

In the Analyze Results section, piped answers appear as bracketed templates, the same way they do in the Design Survey section. For example, 'How satisfied are you with the following aspects of {{ Q1 }}?'

Survey takers will see the piped text when they’re taking the survey for a more personalized experience.

You can filter your results by question and answer to see how piped answers relate to the rest of a survey taker's responses.