Branching Question

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Branching Questions, also known as Skip Patterns, are questions where the flow of the survey changes based on a respondent's answer. For example:

Example the question to collect the branching data
1. What is your age:

__ less than 18 years old

__ over 18 and less than 65 years old

__ over 65 years old

the branching question
2. If you answered your age is less than 18 years old, please skip to Question 3.
Did you vote in the last Presidential election?

__ Yes

__ No

question where the flow comes back together
3. Some other question

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Branching questions are implemented in this system using the idea of preconditions, much like the wording of Question 2 in the example. This allows other questions to intervene between Questions 1 & 2 in the example, and even allows for repeated use of the precondition in some other question further down the survey.

Another alternative to this branching question design, when data is known about the respondent in advance is the use of a Question Group. This strategy avoids asking the respondent the question (for which the answer is already known), thereby shortening the survey and increasing the reliability.