What is Skip Logic, and how it can benefit your data collection

3rd April 2020

In your day to day business activities, individual client requirements dictate their actions or business decisions.  If you want to empower your ability to identify these specific preferences, there are ways you can refine or speed up this decision making process. If a lot of your time is spent collecting responses where you are trying to get a better understanding of what is required to move forward, it might be useful if you can hide questions that don’t apply depending on where the questions lead you.

In a multiple option survey scenario, when asking questions that will allow you to either skip or ensure you have to answer certain questions, it is important to be able to follow the appropriate survey flow, based on the selected question. In order to improve the survey flow and create an effective report, NestForms provides you with the benefit of using what they call “Skip Logic” or you might be familiar with other variants of this such as conditional logic/questioning or branch logic. This is also similar to using the “If” formula in MS Excel.

Your survey might be either a yes/no type of survey or it contains Single Answer, Multiple Answer or DropDown answer options. The NestForms Skip Logic feature is able to accommodate an option for any - let’s call key questions in your survey. This question not only serves to keep the flow and the relevant dynamic of your survey, but is also increasing the efficiency and relevance of the survey outcome - the survey response.

How Skip logic can make your life easier?

The main benefit of Skip Logic is the difference you can make in not only speeding up the process of collecting data but also in helping you maintain the correct flow and structure of your audit or survey, helping you to end up with a comprehensive and accurate survey report.

All you need to remember is that Skip Logic is applied for certain questions that require the respondent to make a choice in their answer leading to logical comparisons between a value and what is expected.

Some examples to consider might include:

If you are a property auditor, and you have several areas to cover in your audit, you can for example refine the narrative or flow of the questions depending on certain key points. An example key question can be the Type of property to be audited with corresponding possible answers: House, Apartment, Warehouse etc. So when you choose an Apartment, you can easily skip questions regarding the property driveway, roof condition, etc. But when you choose a House, you would display these questions.

Or imagine you are conducting a transport survey, you might not need to record any details regarding the respondees driving preferences if the responder does not own a car or have a licence, but you can simply skip to continue recording their preferences regarding their favourite mode of public transport.

NestForms provides a useful help page that explains firstly how Skip Logic works as well as how you can make the best use of it.