Question pipes provide a means to transfer answer data automatically from one question to a question in a subsequent page. The question that receives the data is the pipe destination. The question that provides the data is the pipe source. Any question can be a pipe destination. Multiple choice and open ended questions can be pipe sources.
Example:
Consider a multiple choice question "What is the brand of your cell phone?" where the answer is chosen amongst a list of brands.
Another question may ask "Are you satisfied with your [answer from phone brand question] phone?".
A question pipe can transfer the answer to the response from the brand question to the text for the second question. If a respondent choose answer "Motorola" to the first question, they will see "Are you satisfied with your Motorola phone?" when they reach the second question.
A question pipe is created using shorthand notation in any text field in the destination question. The the shorthand notation for the question must be enclosed in brackets. In the example above the Question text field for the second question would be as shown below:
Where P2Q2 refers to question 2 of page 2 in the survey, which is the question asking about phone brand.
In page details for surveys, questions that are the source of pipes are identified as such as illustrated above.
A pipe is deleted simply by remove the shorthand notation to the source question in the destination question (e.g., changing the question text to "Are you satisfied with your phone?" in the example above).
The destination of question pipes is not limited to question names. Any text label in a question can be the destination of a pipe (e.g., matrix row name, open ended field label, rating or ranking field label, ...).
Question pipes are allowed only between questions in the same survey or between questions in the same library. The existence of a pipe between two questions will prevent the move of either of the questions to another survey or to a library.
Pipes may become invalid under the following circumstances:
- the question at the source of the pipe is deleted
- the question at the destination of the pipe is located on the same or on a prior page as the question at the source of the pipe. This situation may occur when either of the two questions are moved within the survey.
To correct an invalid pipe, either correct the ordering of the questions or delete the pipe.
Invalid pipe are detected and listed when a survey is validated. If a survey with invalid pipes is deployed, respondents will see "invalid" at the location of the pipe destination when they view the destination question.
Note that if the question at the destination of the pipe is deleted, the pipe simply ceases to exist.
Question pipes are available only in surveys and not in libraries.