Questionnaire

I think I have always thought of myself as a "planner." While some people "fly by the seat of their pants," I am constantly thinking ahead to the consequences of my actions. The way I see it, this can be a good thing and a bad thing. Being a "planner" is bad because I am not as spontaneous as some of my friends. The "life of the party" is usually not someone who thinks ahead. However, it is a good thing at the same time, especially when operating in the corporate world, and specifically when designing online surveys.

I wrote a post a couple weeks ago about the importance of thinking ahead to reporting before designing a questionnaire online. I want to address a related issue: survey question logic. We on the Cvent Web Surveys Client Services team always strongly encourage our clients to use survey logic to their advantage. Lately, however, I have been getting lots of calls from clients who are having trouble with the logic they have applied. The reason for this is simple: too many clients do not plan or map out the logic they'll apply to their electronic survey. This lack of planning can cause numerous problems, most notably conflicting survey logic.

In the past two weeks, I have spoken with two clients who applied both branch logic and advanced logic to their online surveys. Both of these clients called because they were concerned there was a technical issue which was prohibiting the logic from functioning as it should. "But, I set up my branch logic correctly, and I know that my advanced logic should be working fine too, so what is wrong?" In both cases, the problem was the clients had applied branch logic which conflicted with the advanced logic, and the survey system therefore did not know where to send survey respondents when they answered a question a particular way. "If only these clients had planned ahead and mapped out the survey logic before launching their surveys," I thought, "then this problem could have been avoided."

Moral of the story: Please take advantage of the wonderful survey logic functionality available with Cvent Web Surveys software. However, at the same time, make sure to plan ahead. Even if you are someone who generally "flies by the seat of your pants," when designing online survey questionnaires, you should be a "planner" for once.