Branching: Headache or Heart Throb?

Pete JentzenPete Jentzen, Inquisite Support Engineer

When I'm on the phone speaking with Inquisite survey administrators about branching, I hear only two opinions of this feature: Love it or Hate it. Those that love it have clicked with the concept in a fundamental way, but those that hate it have valid reasons:

  • "I need to use it but I don't get it, and that makes me feel stupid!"
  • "I don't understand why my branching doesn't jump to where I want it to go."
  • "I don't have time to learn all this."

The interesting thing that I've found about grasping the branching idea is that everyone seems to think of it differently, and once the concept has been described in the way that reaches you, it's yours forever. Here is an example to help illustrate the concept of branching:

Inquisite branching example

Here are four short conceptual thoughts to help unlock the useful and liberating concept of branching.

  1. Once you have created a series of questions, pictures, and pages, each one has the potential to be hidden or visible. Branching empowers you to control what respondents will see, based upon their own responses as they flow through the survey. It is this enablement that allows you to direct the survey's course in a forward direction, toward the Finish button.
  2. The way to progressively weed out respondents that don't relate to your needs is to have a constant chain of branches that pull only targeted respondents through with all their Yes answers enabled. All of the No answers have nothing enabled -- this is how the unwanted respondents are seemingly dropped to the Finish page. They are not able to see the enabled pages!
  3. It's possible to trip on a branch occasionally. When branching from page to page, remember to end one branch on the same page that the next branch begins. This general guideline becomes more detailed when object-level branching is employed.
  4. Always leave the final Finish page totally free of branching. Branch instead to the page before the last. Why? Because unbranched, or available, means everyone will see this part of your survey.

Please call anytime you get stuck with this feature and our Support Team will help you learn to love branching.