Survey Logic/Branching for EMA and ESM

Three Logic Functions You Need to Know

There are several logic functions you can use to manage the flow of your ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and experience sampling method (ESM) survey flow. The three logic functions are:

Skip Logic: Participants skip to another specific question based on their response to the current question.

Jump Logic: Participants jump to a specific question.

Display Logic: The current question is displayed when participants respond in a specific way to a previous question.

Before we tackle the different logic functions, it is essential to know that all the logic applied will be disabled when you decide to randomize your survey questions.

When toggling the logic button while your survey questions are in random order, you will receive this prompt, and you can click 'Ok' to proceed.

When you click the "Randomize questions" button while logic functions are applied, you will receive this prompt, and you can click 'Ok' to proceed.

Skip Logic

The skip logic function allows you to have participants skip forward to another part of the survey when they respond with a specific option in the current question. 

For example, you can implement skip logic in a single-selection question where participants select one option out of multiple choices.

"Logic" does not display if there are no other questions in the survey or if the single-selection question is the last question in the survey (as there must be something to skip forward to). You must add more questions before being allowed to enable the skip logic function.

In this example, SKIP logic will be applied to question 2. The logic is set to where, from question 2, it will skip to question 5, IF RESPONSE to question 2 is watching TV / movies. Otherwise, the questions will be in order.

You can also skip to a block of questions as well. As seen below, you can choose the specific block of questions to skip forward to by selecting "Block".

The first question in the block represents the entire block. In this example, it is question 7.

You can also randomize the questions within the block.

In general, it is recommended that "Forced Response" be enabled with "Skip Logic" so that participants will need to respond to the question.

Jump Logic

For instance, if participants encounter an instruction question, they can skip ahead to a designated section of the survey.

For example, placing the instruction question after a question block allows participants to advance to a different survey section after completing that block, as illustrated below.

Display Logic

Another way to manage the flow within the survey is by using the "Display Logic" function. The display logic function displays certain questions based on participants' responses to previous questions in the survey. 

This is particularly useful when you have a set of questions that only needs to be answered if participants encountered a specific event (e.g., ate a meal) or had an interaction (e.g., interacted with a friend). Otherwise, the questions will not be displayed.

For the first illustration, you may only want to ask the time when a participate ate a meal, but only if they did eat a meal previously. To implement this, select the "Add Logic" function to the question that is optionally displayed. Then, create the "Display if" condition to display the question.

There may be occasions when you want to apply "Display Logic" to a group of questions. For example, you may ask whether participants met with a friend in the past two hours. If they answered 'yes', you then display multiple questions associated with their interaction.

In this case, you should apply "Add Logic" to Question Groups or Groups.

Advanced Block Logic

In general, two types of logic can be applied to a block of questions (question group of group questions):

1. Jump Logic: allowing the question block to jump to a specific block, question, or end of survey
   
2. Display Logic: allowing the question block to be displayed if a specific response choice was selected for a previous question
   

Block Jump Logic

In this example, if you would like the participant who finishes answering this question group titled 'Happy Factors' to end the survey as the following questions are irrelevant to them, you can apply the jump logic so that they will finish the survey after this question block.

Block Display Logic

Here, we have an example of a block display logic, where a question block titled 'Happy Factors' is displayed only if the response to the previous question, 'I am feeling a bit happier now,' is 'Yes'.

Jump and/or Display Logic for Question Block with Random Selection Applied

To create diversity in messaging, you can now display only a selected number of randomized questions within the question block (more details on the random selection within the question block feature can be found here). With this feature applied, the jump and/or display block logic can still be used, allowing greater flexibility and variability in your survey creation.

Here is an example of both jump and display block logic being applied together with the random selection feature. With these applied, participants will see any two randomly selected quotes from the group titled 'Confidence Motivational Quotes' if they select 'Disagree' or 'Strongly Disagree' to the previous question 'I'm feeling confident'. After this, the survey will lead them to another question block, starting with question 41.

Skip Logic for Question Group with Random Selection of Only One Question Applied

Here is another example of advanced block logic that you can apply:

If you have a question group with similar messaging (for example, a set of happy questions with the same meaning but just phrased differently), you can choose to randomly select one of the questions within the question group to display to participants. Based on the block response choice to this one random question, block skip logic can be applied to allow you to skip from one block to another.

Note: This block skip logic will only appear if the random selection of only one question is applied to a question group. Only two block skip logic can be applied, so this is only recommended for a single-selection question group with only two block response choices.

This provides enhanced flexibility and variety in your survey creation. Using both the random selection and block skip logic features together is especially useful when participants have been taking the same survey for an extended period of time, and you would like to keep the study engaging to reduce survey fatigue and participant attrition.

For example, this question group, 'Happy Questions,' has both random selection of one question and block skip logic applied. If the block response choice 'No' is selected, it will skip to the next block, 'Stress Questions'. However, if 'Yes' is selected, it will skip to another block titled 'Rest Questions'. 

In this survey, both 'Stress Questions' and 'Rest Questions' have only one question randomly selected.

Hence, participants will only see one random question displayed from all three question groups:

Mobile view if 'No' is selected to random 'Happy Question'

      

Mobile View if 'Yes' is selected to random 'Happy Question'

      

For further inquiries, please reach out to mark@expiwell.com

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