Jumping

Overview

A jump causes a participant to jump from one part of a survey to another, skipping everything in between. Jumps can be conditional, occurring only when a participant meets certain criteria, or unconditional, in which case they always happen for all participants. A jump can move a participant forward or backward through a survey. Each survey can contain multiple jumps.

Warnings

While jumps are convenient, they can make a survey excessively complex, difficult to test, and difficult to maintain. In general, it is advised to use show-if conditions rather than jumps, for these reasons:

  • Show-if conditions appear as yellow circles next to survey objects in the survey designer. They are easily recognized, and it is easy to see the conditions attached to them. This makes them easier to maintain and edit.  In other words, you can mouse over the object and immediately know the conditions under which it will be shown.
  • Unlike show-if conditions, jumps are not attached to any particular object. While a show-if condition can suppress only the object to which it is attached, a jump can suppress all objects between its point of origin and it’s destination. If a certain question is not appearing in the survey, it’s easy to look at the question to see if a show-if condition is attached. It’s much more difficult to hunt through the entire survey looking for a particular jump that contains a condition that might cause the question not to display.
  • Poorly implemented jumps can leave participants in an infinite loop. For example, if a jump sends certain participants back to question #2 after they answer question #10, some participants may never be able to get past question #10 of the survey.
  • Having numerous jumps used for navigational purposes within your survey will get you in trouble upon submission of the survey. Data cleaning runs through the survey straight through upon submission. Any questions that are jumped over are not going to be included in your data set.

When to Use Jumps

There are two particular cases in which jumps are preferable to show-if conditions:

  1. When a participant should be moved directly to the end of a survey.
  2. When a single jump will prevent having to create many identical show-if conditions.

How to Use Jumps

To add a jump to a survey, follow these steps:

  1. In the Illume Survey Designer, choose Jump from the Add menu

jump

  1. Give the jump a unique name. A descriptive name will help to remember the purpose of this jump.
  2. (Optional) Type in a description. This can help users understand the reason for the jump.

DS_JumpGeneral.gif

  1. Choose the jump’s destination.
  • Jump to the end of the survey -Jumps to the very last page of the survey, the page that contains the Submit button.  Participants can still navigate back in the survey from this page.
  • Jump to the end of the survey and automatically submit – Submits the participant’s survey and displays the end page content (the page participants see after submitting a survey). Participants cannot go back from the end page.  The submit status of the survey will be “Completed”, unless the Terminate Survey Session box is checked on the Options tab of the jump editor (see below)
  • Jump to the selected survey item – Jumps to the survey item selected in the Select Survey Item list.
    • If Jump to the selected survey item is selected, select the item to which the participant should jump. This can be any type of item: a question, a collection, or a text/HTML item. It is possible to jump to another jump.
  1. Set the Jump-if conditions. Participants will jump only if the conditions specified are met. Set Jump-if conditions in the same manner as setting show-if conditions.
  2. Click OK to close the Jump Editor and save the changes.
  3. Move the jump to the point in the survey where the jump should occur.  For example, if a jump should occur after a participant answers a question asking if they smoke, then drag the jump in the Illume Survey Designer so that it appears immediately beneath the SMOKE question, as in the image below.

 

DS_JumpDesigner.gif

Notice that in the Illume Survey Designer, the Jump appears with its name: JMP1, its destination: Jump-to: DEMOGRAPHICS and its description: Participants who do not smoke Jump directly to Demographics. The yellow circle to the left indicates that this jump is conditional. Hold the mouse pointer over the yellow circle to see the jump-if condition.

Using a Jump to Mark a Participant as Terminated

There are times when a submitted survey session is not considered a completed survey because the Participant did not meet specific screening or other defined criteria and was therefore jumped out of the survey. This can be marked as a Terminated session.  The value of marking the session as Terminated is two fold:

1. Terminated sessions do not count towards the Transaction count in your Illume license

2. Marking the session as terminated allows you to filter and query on the variable DATSTAT.SUBMISSIONSTATUS to identify survey sessions that are Complete vs. Terminated.

To Mark and Jumped Survey As Terminated:

NOTE: This option will only be available for the Jump Type of “Jump to the end of the survey and automatically submit.”

  1. Create a Jump by following the steps above
  2. While in the Jump Editor click on the Options Tab
  3. Check Terminate survey session

DS_JumpTerminate.gif

  1. Click OK to save

Using the Terminate check will set the DATSTAT.SUBMISSIONSTATUS variable to ‘Terminated’.

Setting a Preload/Hidden variable to a value for a Jump

This allows users to use a preload/hidden variable for purposes of storing the reason for termination, screen out or any other type of Jump.  Thus although the DATSTAT.SUBMISSIONSTATUS variable will tell you whether the participant terminated, the Preload/Hidden variable will tell you why the participant terminated.

To Set a Preload/Hidden Variable:

  1. Follow the steps in creating a Preload/Hidden variable.  In the example below, the name of the Preload/Variable is TERMINATE_REASON_CODE.  It has 3 scale values: Smokes, Pregnant, Opt Out.

NOTE: This option requires a preload/hidden variable of type “select-one”, with a scale defined on the scale tab. 

  1. While in the Jump Editor click on the Options Tab
  2. Select Set preload/hidden variable to a value specified below
  3. Select the Variable Name of the variable just created above
  4. Select the appropriate Value of the selected Variable
  5. Click OK to save

DS_JumpReasons.gif