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Using piping in survey questions and answers can ensure a better experience for the survey taker, and better-quality data too!

Here are some best practices for using piping in surveys.

Piping is commonly used to customize answer lists by showing respondents a relevant subset of answer options based on their previous responses.

For example, Q1, below is about retailer awareness, and Q2 is about shopping history at those same retailers. We can logically assume that consumers have not shopped at a store they previously mentioned they were unaware of, so Q2 answer options can be a respondent’s answers from Q1, as well as “None of the above”. To pipe in answers, use the @ symbol in the answer field, and select the question you would like to reference.

In Upsiide, you can also pipe in things respondents did NOT select, to gather more information on items that respondents reject.

Note that if you are using only piped answers (i.e. not adding new options like “None of the above”) in a follow-up question, and a respondent only selected one option in the initial question, they will automatically skip the follow-up question.

Piping can be used to probe on something that a respondent said earlier.

For example,

In some cases it’s important to keep the respondent focused on a particular frame of reference. Here, it can be helpful to use piping to keep the question text relevant to them. For example asking if people would purchase an item for their child of a certain age.

*Note that answers from the Audience Screener cannot be piped into questions in the body of the survey.