Page conditions are the mechanism by which pages in a multi-page survey are optionally displayed. That is, other than the first page in a survey, each page may be shown to or hidden from the respondent based on the page conditions associated with the page. If a page does not contain any page conditions, the page is always displayed to the user.
The page conditions are based on the responses given to a question or series of questions on a prior page or pages in the survey. A page condition can be based on any question on any prior page, not just the previous page. If the conditions on a survey evaluate to "True," the page is displayed. Similarly, if any of the page conditions evaluate to "False," the page is hidden from the respondent.
Each condition is created by selecting a question from a prior page, selecting an operator, and entering or selecting the value to be compared using the selected operator. The appropriate operators and, if applicable, the predefined answers for a question, are displayed depending on the type of the question selected.
Each page condition must be part of a group, and each page in a survey can use up to five groups. A group is the way "AND" vs. "OR" logic has been implemented in the application. The conditions within a single group are evaluated using "AND" logic, while each group is combined together using "OR" logic. Thus, a page is displayed if at least one group evaluates to "True," even if all other groups on the page are "False." A single group evaluates to "True" if all of the individual conditions within that group evaluate to "True."
To better illustrate how groups work, let’s use an example of a page in a survey that has two groups, each of which has two conditions. The page will be displayed if:
• Both conditions in the first group evaluate to "True" (regardless of how the second group evaluates)
• Both conditions in the second group evaluate to "True" (regardless of how the first group evaluates)
The page will NOT be displayed if:
• Each group has at least one condition that evaluates to "False"
As a second example, a survey contains five pages. The first page contains a single question which is a dropdown box prompting the user to select his/her gender. If the user selects "Male," the fifth page should be displayed. If the user selects "Female," page two, three, and four (but not five) should be displayed. To implement, page conditions are added to the second, third, fourth, and fifth pages of the survey. Each page has a single page condition, all of which use the question from the first page. On pages two, three, and four, the page condition uses an equal operator, and the value "Female." On the fifth page, the page condition again uses an equal operator, with the value "Male." In the case where "Male" is selected on the first page, the user "skips" from the first page to the fifth page. This type of skip logic is commonly used, and is a good example of how every page in a survey can be conditionally displayed to the user.