What is skip logic and branching and how does it work? Skip logic and branching is typically used to customise each respondent’s "journey" through a survey. It is in the nature of surveys to offer participants different answer options to choose from which directly affect the relevance of any subsequent questions. This is where skip logic and branching come in to increase the quality of experience for survey-takers.Broadly speaking, there are two types of survey participants: there are those who are genuinely interested or impacted by the survey topic and there are those who are motivated by incentives offered. Either way, people who decide to take a survey hope to capitalise on it, be it due to the gain of knowledge or a compensatory reward. In order to draw your own profit from conducting a survey, i.e. receiving meaningful and complete information from your respondents, you have to consider the "journey" for your participants to be just as important as the "destination". Essentially, this means that you apply targeting-like logic to determine which questions are displayed to a specific survey participant and which questions aren’t based on previously selected answers. By doing so, you individually eliminate all irrelevant questions and place the greatest importance on the needs and interests of your respondents.The consequence? You will avoid survey fatigue (i.e. any obstacles people face before and during your survey that will lead to bounce behaviour, in this case irrelevant survey content), increase response rates and receive higher data quality. Toggle table of contents Simply put, skip log and branching in LimeSurvey works in the following way: a survey participant selects a specific answer A1 to a question Q1. This answer A1 may logically render the following question Q2 irrelevant and may require skip logic to hide question Q2 and instead move straight on to question Q3. Here’s a simple example: if a participant answers ‘No’ in the first question, thereby making clear that he/she doesn’t own a pet, the second question on which type of pet the respondent owns is automatically rendered moot. If you don’t use skip logic and keep showing irrelevant questions like in the example, you risk exhausting and losing your participant which results in a loss of potentially valuable data.Whenever setting up a questionnaire, bear in mind to act on the maxim that people are always looking for a great experience, as it also applies to the participation process in a survey. Skip logic example survey Condition elements and how are they applied in LimeSurvey The LimeSurvey skip logic consists of specific elements/operators which define the requirements of any condition.The tested value is typically the initial question that triggers the integration of a condition. In the above example, the tested value could be the question ‘Do you own a pet?’ when setting up a condition for displaying the second question ‘What kind of pet do you own?’. Alternatively, you may choose survey participants attributes as the basis for a condition such as first/last name, email address, token, language code.The comparison operator, in our example equal, links the tested value and the comparison value to create an equation/inequation for the condition.Last, the comparison value marks the counterpart of the tested value, in this case the answer options ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, thereby completing the condition equation/inequation. Alternatively, you may select constants, specific questions and token fields as comparison values.Thus, we end up with the condition Only show question ‘What kind of pet do you own?’ if: ‘Do you own a pet?’ equals ‘Yes’. As a result, the question ‘What kind of pet do you own?’ will be skipped if the answer to the question ‘Do you own a pet?’ is ‘No’. Condition edit mask Discover basic and advanced logic-based conditions in LimeSurvey As already covered in the last paragraph, single conditions can be set up quite easily by choosing a previous question as well as the selection of a predefined answer and coupling these with a comparison operator.This method is especially useful for short surveys that have a rather simple structure with maximum two different question paths. Advanced tip: combine multiple conditions, either based on ... a single choice question: in this case you set up two or more conditions the way it was done for a single condition, based on two or more previous questions with their respective predefined answers. For example, if you ask the question ‘What kind of black pet do you own?’, conditions based on two different questions have to be created. This can be achieved by the example as follows: ‘Do you own a pet?’ equals ‘Yes’ and ‘What colour does your pet have?’ equals ‘Black’ or Multiple conditions based on single choice example Multiple conditions based on single choice conditioning a multiple choice question: in this case, within one of the conditions more than one answer option, i.e. multiple choices, can be selected when displaying the subsequent question. For example, if you ask the question ‘What kind of black and white pet do you own?’, conditions based on two different questions with potentially more than one answer option each have to be created. This can be achieved by the example as follows: ‘Do you own a pet?’ equals ‘Yes’ and ‘What colours does your pet have?’ equals ‘Black’ and ‘White’. Multiple conditions based on multiple choice example Multiple conditions based on multiple choice conditioning (1) A modification of the latter would be to re-phrase the initial question to ‘What kind of black or white pet do you own’ and allow for the multiple choice question ‘What colours does your pet have?’ to at least be answered with one of the options ‘Black’ or ‘White’ among other potential colours. Multiple conditions based on multiple choice conditioning (2) Advanced tip: combine multiple conditions, based on multiple questions. Within this constellation, you have to use scenarios. In the aforementioned conditional cases, there was always just one scenario as the default setting.If you have different question paths leading to the same question at a later stage of the survey process, these paths need to be equipped with scenarios. Let’s take the following example: the initial question Q1 is still ‘Do you own a pet?’. If the respondent answers ‘Yes’, it will lead him/her to question Q2 ‘Would you like to have a second pet?’. If the respondent answers ‘No’ instead, it will lead him/her to question Q3 ‘Would you like to have a pet?’. Subsequently, if Q2 and Q3 are each answered ‘Yes’ (for this case we will ignore the answer options ‘No’), respondents end up at the same question Q4 ‘Are you planning on buying a pet soon?’. In order to build this logic structure, Q4 requires the conditional scenario 1 (Q1 = Yes and Q2 = Yes) or scenario 2 (Q1 = No and Q3 = Yes). So, despite respondents taking different paths from the initial question on, they may end up at the same question at a later stage of the survey due to the creation of different scenarios. These scenarios are automatically set up to be mutually applicable to reach Q4, i.e. they are separated by an ‘OR’. Multiple conditions based on multiple branches Advanced tip: simply copy conditions to other questions to save time. This smart function is a great way to reduce laborious and time-consuming condition set-ups by providing the possibility to easily copy existing conditions to other questions that require the same skip logic. Access a question’s condition that you would like to copy, click the button ‘Copy conditions’ at the top of the page, check all (sub-)conditions you are looking to copy and enter the destination question to copy these selected conditions to. Copy conditions Benefits of LimeSurvey skip logic and branching As you can see, LimeSurvey’s skip logic and branching feature offers a complex, yet incredibly powerful set of functionalities to keep your survey lean and interesting for your participants. In this context, you may benefit from a variety of advantages: Reduce the amount of survey questions for the individual participant to answer Skip questions that add no value when presented to certain participants Keep your participants happier by making the survey quicker to answer and saving them precious time Consequently, increase your response rates Only receive completed surveys with relevant results that will benefit your statistics LimeSurvey offers all features to paid subscriptions as well as free users. Skip logic and branching is no exception here and can be used by anyone to add more intelligence to one’s survey structure.Give it a try and set up some basic questions and answers with our skip logic and branching! Simply click here to get started.If you want to learn more about skip logic and branching, simply visit our LimeSurvey manual.  

Table of contents Introduction: Single Choice Essentials 5-Point Choice Questions Dropdown List Questions Radio List Questions List with Comment Questions Advantages & Disadvantages Get Started Find Out About the Essentials of Single Choice Questioning Singe choice questions are a subcategory of multiple choice question types. Typically, multiple choice questions consist of specific components: the stem is usually a question posed to a survey participant. This stem can be a sentence that requires completing, a problem that requires solving, a topic that requires assessing as well as any additional information that comes with the question. The key is described as the correct answer among all the given answer options, the so-called items. The remaining incorrect answer options are called distractors. However, this has to be treated with caution as it depends on the type of survey that is being conducted. Surveys that are used to test participants on their knowledge regarding a certain subject apply to the aforementioned logic as they deal with factual information which can be divided into correct and incorrect spectrums. A classic example for such a survey is educational testing, i.e. university exams which test student knowledge acquisition. When it comes to surveys however that are designed for asking participants about their opinions, attitudes or emotions, there can’t be a correct-incorrect-classification. In this case, all answer options are potential keys depending on the survey-taker. A good example for this survey type is an election in which the participant chooses one of several candidates or parties that reflect his or her interests to the best of knowledge. What both of these survey types have in common though is the general single choice structure, meaning an initial question followed by at least two or more predefined answer options of which the survey participant may choose only one. Use LimeSurvey’s Variety of Single Choice Questions to Guide Your Participants Single choice questions are a great way of leading your participants through a survey efficiently from a quality and quantity standpoint. It’s a much faster alternative to free text question types as each question only requires one or two clicks and furthermore, it helps participants manage the complex decision-making process due to the compressed variety of answer options. 5-Point Choice Questions This question type offers a 1 to 5 scale to choose from depending on for example the intensity of an answer to a given question. The 5-point choice is the most basic choice-based question type available in LimeSurvey, but is therefore generally applicable due to its rating structure. All core settings such as “relevance equation” (assign value to question and determine whether it’s supposed to be displayed), “random question in group” (randomisation of question order within a group) and more are available for this question type. Advanced Tip: instead of using a 1 to 5 scale, modify it by using a slider with emoticons or a star rating. 5-Point Choice Question Type Example Dropdown List Questions This type of list question presents itself with a dropdown menu from which the participant can select an answer option. The answer options are created by adding any required content to them. While the logic of this question type is the same as the following radio list question type, it does offer a decisive advantage. Radio buttons are immediately visible with the corresponding question and may lead to survey-takers not reading the question carefully enough due to being distracted by the answer options. A dropdown menu enables a participant to focus on reading and understanding the question first before moving on to the list of answer options. All core settings such as “relevance equation” (assign value to question and determine whether it’s supposed to be displayed), “hide tip” (hide question tips in case they’re not required), “alphabetical answer sorting” (answer options can be sorted according to the alphabet), “label for ‘Other’ option” (rename the ‘Other’ answer option to anything you like), “random answer options” (contrary to sorting answer options), “random question in group” (randomisation of question order within a group) and many more are available for this question type. Advanced Tip: add a category separator to your dropdown answer options to provide more structure for the participant, e.g. answer options “orange” and “apple” can be modified to “Fruit: orange” and “Fruit: apple” to display the dropdown category “Fruit” atop of “orange” and “apple”. Dropdown List Question Type Example Radio List Questions The radio list questions contain option buttons which are ultimately graphic control elements that allow a user to select one of a predefined number of alternatives. In LimeSurvey, these radio buttons are shaped like circular holes to click on. Radio buttons differ from checkboxes in a manner that checkboxes often allow for more than one selectable option at a time whereas radio buttons are intended for simply one answer choice. All core settings such as “relevance equation” (assign value to question and determine whether it’s supposed to be displayed), “hide tip” (hide question tips in case they’re not required), “alphabetical answer sorting” (answer options can be sorted according to the alphabet), “label for ‘Other’ option” (rename the ‘Other’ answer option to anything you like), “random answer options” (contrary to sorting answer options), “random question in group” (randomisation of question order within a group) and many more are available for this question type. Advanced Tip: if you have many different predefined answer options you would like to offer to your participants, simply extend your radio list to more than one column (max. eight) to vertically shorten the list of answer options and make it more readable for survey-takers. Radio List Question Type Example List with Comment Questions This question type is almost identical to the radio list question type. However, it adds the possibility of providing a free comment next to the selection of answer options. This is a great possibility for participants to elaborate on the choice of answer or to comment on the question as well as provide any sort of statement. Other than that, it offers all the benefits of the “radio list questions”. All core settings such as “relevance equation” (assign value to question and determine whether it’s supposed to be displayed), “hide tip” (hide question tips in case they’re not required), “alphabetical answer sorting” (answer options can be sorted according to the alphabet), “random answer options” (contrary to sorting answer options), “random question in group” (randomisation of question order within a group) and many more are available for this question type. List with Comment Question Type Example Build on the Advantages and Bear in Mind the Disadvantages of Multiple/Single Choice Question Types Leverage the Advantages Multiple/Single choice questions can deliver great results and turn out to be very effective evaluation tools if the predefined items are composed in a standardised way. Therefore, the beauty of this question type is that it can deliver quality insights on the one hand and simultaneously be used for large quantities of participants on the other hand. These questions can be set up easily and quickly, whether using pen and paper or on electronic devices. Due to its fast score nature, a wide range of content can be covered in a single survey. As a result of the aforementioned benefits, participants will be able to complete surveys quicker and more easily, hence be more inclined to fully complete them which in turn means a higher response rate for the survey creators and more reliable statistics. Consider the Disadvantages Multiple/Single choice questions put a strong limitation on the answer options which may result in no answer at all or an unsatisfactory option selected by a participant. If several of these situations occur within the course of a survey, many participants may supposedly exit without completion. In this case either a single choice question has to provide a way out of this restriction by offering to skip the question (which is highly disadvantageous for the survey creator), the option to select “other”, or a comment box for further elaboration. This question type is more suitable for either very well-defined topics or for lower-order tasks which narrows down its usability. When trying to solve problems or apply higher reasoning techniques in a survey, this question type will quickly run into trouble. Other typical disadvantages are for example ambiguity of predefined items depending on the survey creator’s interpretation and schematic answering in certain patterns by survey-takers which may lead to falsified results. Luckily though, LimeSurvey offers plenty of additional features to eliminate any disadvantages and create a fine mix of different question types. Enjoy the Benefits of LimeSurvey Single Choice Question Types LimeSurvey offers all features to paid subscriptions as well as free users. Single choice questions, being one of many different available question types, are no exception here and can help you get started with the LimeSurvey software. Give it a try and set up some basic questions and answers with our single choice questions: you’ll see it’s as easy a pie! Simply click here to get started. Furthermore, if you really want to get into advanced survey creation, you won’t be restricted. LimeSurvey and single choice question types in specific can be used in a wide range of different fields, such as educational testing, market research, elections and general scientific research. If you want to learn even more about all of our question types, simply visit our LimeSurvey manual.

As announced in your previous blog post the 2.06LTS (Long Term Support) version is now available!Please note that this version is available on ComfortUpdate and release package download only to our Premium Package subscribers.This LTS version is only meant for existing users of LimeSurvey 2.06 - if you are a new user please download and use the latest Version 2.50 instead.

Finally with this 2.50 release we are receiving a good and wanted amount of bug reports and are releasing a new 2.50+ build version almost daily, with latest translations and latest fixes.These daily releases are there to show that we take your reports very seriously and we want you to get issues fixed as soon as possible. We are also very thankful for everyone that contributes to the translations as many texts have changed inside LimeSurvey. To be fully responsive (we are relying on the Bootstrap framework) the new version 2.50 does not have backward-compatible templates, anymore. Also to deal with contemporary characters like emojis the requirements for the MySQL version were raised to 5.5.2 (this should not be a problem with any decent hoster) We are asking existing 2.0x users to hold their horses for a very short while longer regarding updating to the latest version as we are still clearing update paths.You will know when it is cleared, because at that point we will start offering the version 2.50 on ComfortUpdate (as we did with previous versions) and on LimeService. LimeSurvey 2.06 LTS being available soon We are aware that there are many professional users who have a big amount of running surveys and it will take them some time and preparation to move to LimeSurvey 2.50. For these users we will be offering a LTS (Long Term support) version that we will provide for at least 6 months. This version will mainly include security fixes and (if anything like this should come up) high-impact bug fixes.This version will only be made available as download package or by ComfortUpdate to users who bought a Premium/ComfortUpdate package starting in March. Further roadmap After 2.5 development and issue fixing has calmed down we will merge 2.5 and 3.0 to extend on making LimeSurvey even more modular for the future.LimeSurvey 3.0 is currently scheduled for Q4 2016.