Survey Branching & Drill Down

Container

What is a container?

A container is a tool that can be used to conveniently group related survey questions together. It can be advantageous to use containers because you can apply one rule to the entire container, instead of adding a rule to each question in the related group.

Questions

“Questions” are the survey questions that were added from the survey step in the create flow. Each question will display a numerical reference, the question, and the question type.

Drill down

A drill down is a series of related questions that leaders can use to collect increasingly specific data from participants. If, for example, participants are being asked to indicate what role they fill on a specific team in a particular department a leader could build a drill down in which participants indicate their department, then their team and role. The advantage of a drill down is that the questions about team and role would only include response options that make sense given the participant’s previous responses. Drill down questions are useful when you want to ask a respondent to choose from a long list of options or if the questions and answers are nested together. 

Rules

A rule allows you to add logic to a given element (container, question, drill down, etc.) based on a previous response from a participant. For any given element, you must select if the rule(s) are meant to show or hide the given element.

You can also setup rule groups, where you may want to add multiple rules to cover a wider participant audience from several different questions.

When more than one rule is added, you’ll have the option to decide whether the rule should follow an “AND” condition or an “OR” condition.

End survey

The element “End survey” acts as a end to the survey question section. This is a convenient tool when you want to navigate the participant to the end of the survey questions.

Re-ordering elements

You can re-order your questions (or any other element) by using the direction arrows next to the element.

Note: once you apply any branching logic, the re-ordering of questions from the survey step will be disabled as the survey question branching flow will be utilized. Consider the impact on branching logic before rearranging the order of survey questions. If you change the sequence so that a question following branching logic precedes the one containing that logic, it will disrupt the branching.

To illustrate how branching works, let's consider a couple of examples. For these examples, imagine you are the superintendent of a school district, but the following principles we will cover can apply to any scenario where branching is needed. 

(Example A)

In this example, you’re in the planning phase of some facility upgrades at some of the schools in your district. You want to gather feedback and opinions from your stakeholders but want to ensure only students, parents, and staff members are answering the school facility survey questions.

To Start (setup survey questions)

1. Start by adding all the survey questions you want to ask before you setup any branching. You can do this from the survey step in the create flow. If you forget to add a question, you can always go back and add a question after starting your branching.
2. Go to “Settings”, located in the top right corner (gear icon)
   
3. Go to “Survey question branching” from the left Settings navigation menu
4. Toggle ‘Survey question branching’ to ‘On’

   Design your branching flow

5. A vertical flow interface will display all questions that were added and order them between the “Start questions” and “Complete” indicators.

   
   Note: The participants will always see questions in the order displayed (top to bottom)
6. There are three related questions (#2, #3, #4) so it would be convenient to add these into a container.
        a.    To do this, click on “Add element” at the bottom of the page.
        b.    Select “Container” and select questions #2, #3, and #4. Then click “Add” in the dialog. 
        
7. Next, we will want to remove the duplicate questions that are already displayed. Click on the remove question icon (located to the right of the question) for #2, #3, and #4.
        
8. We don’t want “Community members (from question #1)” to answer any of the container questions (#2, #3, #4).
        a. Toggle the container to “Hide”
        b. Click “Add rule” on the container element
        c. Ensure the rule is set to IF {1. What is your role in the district?} selected {Community Member}
   
        Note: this rule will read as “Hide this container IF participants selected {Community Member} from       {1. What is your role in the district?}”
        
9. Then click “Apply” in the bottom right of the settings page.
10. You can exit the setting page by clicking on “Exit”, then “Preview” your branching flow by using the Preview feature.

Note: Access to this feature is dependent on account type and settings. If you find you do not have access to this or any other feature described on our help site, reach out to your ThoughtExchange rep to learn more.

Example B

In this example, you want to assess how staff members are doing across the school district. You have a list of school names and the corresponding neighborhoood and school level. You want to retain accuracy in your data and don’t want staff select a school that’s in the wrong neighborhood. In this case it’s wise to use a drill down then ask any survey question or Exchange following the drill down.

To Start (setup survey questions)

1. Start by adding all the survey questions you want to ask before you setup any branching. You can do this from the survey step in the create flow. If you forget to add a question, you can always go back and add a question after starting your branching.
2. Go to “Settings”, located in the top right corner (gear icon).

3. Go to “Survey question branching” from the left Settings navigation menu

Add your drill down

4. Prepare your spreadsheet in the following format. The header for each column will serve as the survey question.

5. Click “Add element” and select “Drill down”

6. Once the file has successfully uploaded click “Import” on the dialog
7. A Drill down element should appear. It will contain conditional answer logic already incorporated in the element based on the spreadsheet you uploaded.

Note: you can reupload a spreadsheet to replace the one you uploaded if you require content modifications.

8. Place the drill down in your desired position with the direction arrows.

Note: A Drill down will automatically create your survey question and answers for you. So you do not need to create a separate set of survey questions from your spreadsheet. You can edit the question type if you require (muliple choice, dropdown or checkbox) when you exit the Settings page and return to Step 2 of the survey creation interface.

Example C

In this example, you want to ask a specific set of questions to only parents or staff from Banff Elementary School and Banff Community High School. This use case is a perfect example where you can utilize a rule group.

To setup a rule group 

1. Find the element you want to add the rule group to then click on “Add rule”
2. Next click on “Add rule group”

Note: you may want to remove the initial rule to help with visibility in understanding the group confirguration, but it’s not necessary

3. Then build out your first rule group. Click “Add rule”
   a.   Add the following rules:
   b.   {1. What is your role in the district?} selected {Staff Member}

OR
    c.    {1. What is your role in the district?} selected {Parent/Guardian}

4. Then build out the second rule group. Click on “Add rule group” at
          a.   Add the following rules:
          b.   {2. What schools do your children attend?} selected {Banff Elementary School}

OR
          c.   {2. What schools do your children attend?} selected {Banff Community High School}

5. Ensure the first condition is set to “AND” so that the rule group will read as “Show this container IF participants selected {Parent/Guardian} or {Student} from {1. What is your role in the district?} AND {Banff Elementary School} or {Banff Community High School} from {2. What schools do your children attend?}”

You may come across a use case where you want to apply logic to just your survey question answers. For this case, we’ve included an advanced option which can be accessed by clicking on the “Show advanced features” toggle.

Example D

In this example, you want to show specific answers to a given question based on a response to a previous question. We have two neighbourhoods “Willowbrook Heights” and “Harborview Bay”, each has two elementary schools. Without using a drill down we can add conditional logic to just the answers.

To use conditional answers (advanced) 

1. Setup all your survey questions in advance from the survey step in the create flow
2. Go to survey question branching, located under Settings
3. Toggle “Show advanced features”

4. Click on “Select conditional answers” under {2. Which school?}

5. Select all answers you want to apply logic towards. In this example, select all answers and click “Update”

6. Add a rule to each answer based on the neighborhood it belongs to {1. Which neighborhood}

Example: with this logic, we are saying “IF the respondent selects {Willowbrook Heights} from the question “Which neighbourhood?, show these answers {Whimsy Woods Elementary} and {Sparklebrook Elementary}, IF the respondent selects {Harborview Bay} from the question “Which neighbourhood?”, show these answers {Rainbow Hills Elementary} and {Adventure Cove Elementary}”