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Carrying forward answers from multiple choice questions to other questions
Carrying forward answers from multiple choice questions to other questions

Using the Forward Answers feature to mask or hide unselected answers from respondents later in their survey

Parm Bansil avatar
Written by Parm Bansil
Updated over a week ago

You can forward each respondent's selected multiple choice answers through your survey, so that every question is hyper-relevant to each respondent. This removes - or "masks" - answers which haven't been selected so that respondents are presented with a narrower choice of relevant options as they move through the survey. You may have seen this feature called "masking", or "hiding answers" in other survey tools.

You can forward answers (text and/or images) from one multiple-choice question to become:

  1. The answers in other multiple-choice questions later in the survey

  2. The answers in single-choice questions later in the survey

  3. The subjects in grid questions later in the survey

Once you have added your multiple-choice question and a follow-up question (multiple-choice, single-choice or grid) you'll see the option to Forward answers. Toggling this on will display a drop down list where you can select the earlier multiple-choice question you'd like to forward the answers from. You can then add more follow-up questions pulling answers or subjects from earlier multiple-choice questions as many times as you wish.

You can route from any answer option as usual, but the question from which the answers are forwarded and the follow-up question which displays the refined answers must be in the same route. You cannot use the "Other" option in the card from which the answers are forwarded, as the typed response might not be relevant to the follow-up question. The "None" and "N/A" options can be used, and if selected by the respondent they will automatically be selected for the follow-up question too. Similarly, if a respondent skips the card from which the answers are forwarded, they will automatically skip the follow-up question.

Whereas routing takes respondents down a single alternative route based on their response to a multiple choice question, carrying forward answers allows you to keep all the responses in a single question card while still refining the answers for each respondent. You will need to use routing if you wish to offer different answer options, but if you want to offer the same answer options then use the Forward answers option instead of routing.

The preview screen shows all answer options, but any follow-up question shows a note that the answers or subjects will be forwarded from a previous question.

In the results dashboard, chevron arrows are also used to represent questions where answers have been forwarded. You can choose if you want the percentage to be calculated based on the total base sample or forwarded sample for that specific question.

If you have any questions about forwarding answers in your survey, don't hesitate to get in touch with us using the in-platform live chat.

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