See who gets each routed question, and edit rules in clear groups

Question routing lets one discussion guide serve every group in your study. The hard part was setup. Once a question carried several rules, working out who would see it meant opening the rules, reading them one by one and looking up each earlier question they pointed to.

Short on time? Watch the one-minute version.

How it works

• Read who gets each question. Every routed question shows a line underneath, such as "Shown if Q3 was answered 'Not very important' AND 3 other rules".

• See the question a rule points to. Hover a question number such as Q3 to read that earlier question.

• See every rule at once. Hover the rule count to list all the rules on that question and how they combine, with a link straight to edit routing.

• Edit in the same terms. The question routing panel reads as a sentence: ask this question when any (or all) of these groups match.

Rules now read as groups you can follow

Each group matches all or any of its conditions: "all" joins them with AND, "any" with OR. Add a rule to a group, or a sub-rule to nest a group with its own all or any. The routing logic itself is unchanged.

Research teams asked for it in four situations

These come from teams in consumer goods, food and drink, media and streaming, retail, financial services and research agencies. We kept them anonymous.

• A path for each consumer group. Users, non-users, lapsed users and switchers in one guide, each getting only their questions.

• Questions that depend on several answers. Teams asked how to combine conditions, and when to join them with AND or OR.

• Checking who sees what before launch. Teams wanted to confirm the right people get each question before going live.

• Matching the guide to the brief. When a brief says which audience gets which question, the guide should show that plan question by question.

What this means for your research

You can check a routed guide by reading it top to bottom, so a wrong rule is easier to catch before any participant meets it.

Two limits to know. Routing decides which questions each participant gets, so use screeners and quotas to decide who takes part. And the preview describes the rules, so still run a test interview for each important path before launch.

Routing preview in one minute

The update in 42 seconds: a plain-language line under every routed question, and rules grouped with all or any.

Watch Peter walk through the update

Peter Kowalczyk from our engineering team built routing preview and the new rule editor with Abby and Mike at our latest hackathon. Read the question routing guide to set up routing in your next study.