Support Forums

Hi, Kathy,

For now, here's some instruction for Advanced Show/When rules:

Advanced Show/When is best used for setting up rules that are based on answers from more than one question on a previous page of the survey.

The rules for Advanced Show/When logic will look something like this:

('[%%12:question%%]' > 32 AND '[%%13:question2%%]' < 32 ) OR '[%%2:gender%%]' == 'Male' 

The first element of the rule is the merge code for the question (e.g.[%%12:question%%]).  

To find the merge code for the questions in your Show/When rule, go to each question that will be part of the rule and click the Advanced Edit icon (the little notebook on the left side of the question).

When the question opens up, on the right side of the Question Title box you will see a smaller box. Click the link at the bottom of that box that is labeled 'Select a Variable'. A dropdown box will appear. Set the dropdown to the question that you wanting the merge code for.

The merge code will appear under the box. Copy that merge code and add it to your rule.

The next part of the rule is the ‘operator’ (e.g. >):

== : Equal to

!= : Not Equal to

>  : Greater than

<  : Less than

>= : Greater than or equal to

<= : Less than or equal to

The last element of the rule is the value (e.g. 32, Male). This value is derived from the reporting value of your question and must match the reporting value exactly, including capitalization.

You can merge statements in the rule with the ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ operators.  ‘AND’ says both statements must be true for the whole statement to (process) evaluate to true.  ‘OR’ says either statement can be true for the whole statement to evaluate to true.

If a rule is true, the page will be shown.

Numeric values in the rule do not need single quotes (e.g. 32) while values that are not numbers (e.g. 'Male') need to have single quotes around them. 

A word of caution: If you construct your rules in a Word document and then paste them into the survey editor, the single quotes may need to be deleted and re-typed. The single quote from Word sometimes does not register properly  which means the logic won’t work in your survey.

I hope this helps. 

–Cheri

correct, you can't get the merge code for the question you are currently viewing without going to a later question.

Single quotes are only required if the merge code and value should be evaluated as a string. 'bob' is a string. 7 is not.

<!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–><!–[endif]–> Is not part of the syntax, not sure where you got that info.

Have a good day!

Hello,

I am using the Pro version of SurveyGizmo, and I have spent the past couple of hours trying to get a simple Advanced Show/When display control to work. Although I am new user, this should not be an inherent difficult task. I have followed cheri's guidelines above with no success at all–and have tried to troubleshoot this as best I can. Could someone answer the following questions (or please, please direct me to some sort of online guidance for this elementary problem–which I have not yet been able to find):

1) Is the exact spacing necessary for the syntax (it is hard to tell in cheri's post what this should be).

2) Will the merge code for an acutal question actually look like “[&& 26:When did yo &&]“? If not, what I am doing wrong?

Note that I am dealing with a multiple selection question (call this question 28): I would like a subsequent question (call this question 29) to display if and only if some subset of the answer choices are selected for question 28. I have assigned integers to the reporting values for the choices to question 28, and am using these intergers in the advanced show/Hide syntax for question 29.

Thanks in advance for your help.

James

Hi James,

I've only been playing with SurveyGizmo for 2 days, but below is the syntax that worked for me.

If one condition or the other is true, the question will be hidden (skipped).

Note that the software pastes in merge code — in this case [%%3:Do you have a c %%] into the window, but you will need to bracket it with single quotes. I used == as an operator. Then used exactly the text string that appeared as the question option in my survey — No — also enclosed in single quotes.

'[%%3:Do you have a c %%]'=='No' OR '[%%14:Please check al %%]'=='none of the above'

Hope that helps!

Kathy

James said:

Hello,

I am using the Pro version of SurveyGizmo, and I have spent the past couple of hours trying to get a simple Advanced Show/When display control to work. Although I am new user, this should not be an inherent difficult task. I have followed cheri's guidelines above with no success at all–and have tried to troubleshoot this as best I can. Could someone answer the following questions (or please, please direct me to some sort of online guidance for this elementary problem–which I have not yet been able to find):

1) Is the exact spacing necessary for the syntax (it is hard to tell in cheri's post what this should be).

2) Will the merge code for an acutal question actually look like “[&& 26:When did yo &&]”? If not, what I am doing wrong?

Note that I am dealing with a multiple selection question (call this question 28): I would like a subsequent question (call this question 29) to display if and only if some subset of the answer choices are selected for question 28. I have assigned integers to the reporting values for the choices to question 28, and am using these intergers in the advanced show/Hide syntax for question 29.

Thanks in advance for your help.

James

I think the syntax would be:

'[%%14:Please check al %%]'=='Ajax' AND  '[%%14:Please check al %%]'=='Palmolive' AND  '[%%14:Please check al %%]'=='Dove' AND  '[%%14:Please check al %%]'<>'none of the above'

Note that to reference the option selected on a previous question, you are inserting the actual label that appears on the questionnaire.

Hi Cheri,

But then I'm even more confused. Why does my rule work — which does reference an option selected in a checkbox question?:

'[%%3:Do you have a c %%]'=='No' OR '[%%14:Please check al %%]'=='none of the above'

Thanks for the clarification. What would be the best way then to test for multiple checkbox answers?