What is routing and how do I use it?

Routing is an efficient way of only displaying relevent questions to participants. For example, if you have a question ‘Do you own a dog?’ the answer would be YES or NO.

If participants  have answered YES you may want to ask them a whole page of questions relating to their dog – and hide this page from participants that do not have a dog. This is similar to paper based studies that have instructions such as ‘If you answered Yes to Question 5 please go to Question 18.’

To applying routing to your questionnaire, it is firstly important that you organise your questions correctly. Any questions that are ‘grouped together’ e.g. those associated with ‘Do you own a dog’ should be contained in the same ‘section‘.

You can think of this section as a ‘page’ you would either like to skip, or show, based on the result of a previous question.

To apply the routing (also known as ‘section logic’):

  1. Go the section list page
  2. In the relevant section click the ‘Logic’ icon
  3. Locate the question which will be the logic trigger i.e. the one that asks the relevant question e.g. Do you have a dog?
  4. Create your logic in the usual manner e.g. If the answer to this question is YES then SHOW this section

Things to note about section logic / routing

  • The logic must be dependent on a question in a PREVIOUS section. You cannot apply section logic based on a question within that section.
  • You can currently only apply one set of logic to a section. i.e. you cannot have logic that is dependent on two questions e.g. show this section of the participant is male AND owns a dog
  • It is possible to apply contradictory logic e.g. If the answer is YES show this section and if the answer is YES then DO NOT show this section. Therefore be careful when applying multiple logic
Category Tags: Section Logic / Routing