Carry Forward Responses

[najva]

The Carry Forward feature allows you to use a participant’s responses from one question as the answer options of a later single- or multiple-answer question. This allows you to build dynamic questionnaires without asking participants to repeat information they’ve already provided.

This feature involves two roles:

1. Sender Questions: The question whose responses are forwarded as answer options to another question. A sender can be:
   • A single- or multiple-answer questions, only if they are not in a looped section.
   • A text, number, mass, length, VAS, calendar, image, or barcode questions, only if they are in a looped section.
2. Receiver Questions: The question that displays the forwarded responses as its own answer options. A receiver must be a single- or multiple-answer question.

The following sections explain how to configure each type.

Carry Forward Choices from Choice-Based Questions

To carry forward responses from a single- or multiple-answer question, you can follow these steps:

1. Define two single- or multiple-answer questions as sender and receiver. They can be in the same survey or in different surveys. In this example, the sender is Q1 and the receiver is Q2.

   

2. Open Q2 in Edit mode and enable Carry Forward. Select the survey containing Q1, choose Q1 as the sender question, and specify whether to forward the Selected Answer Options or the Unselected Answer Options.

   
   

3. Publish the survey.

4. When a participant reaches the receiver question, it displays the forwarded answer options based on the participant’s most recent response to the sender question and your selected forwarding option. The forwarded answer options retain the same properties (such as ID and content) as the sender question’s answer options.

Carry Forward Responses from Looped Questions

To carry forward responses from a looped question, you can follow these steps:

1. Create a looped section containing the sender question (text, number, mass, length, VAS, calendar, image, or barcode) and its loop source question. Then create your receiver question in a separate section. These questions can be in the same survey or different surveys. In this example, the sender is Q1, the loop source is Q2, and the receiver is Q3.

   

2. Open Q3 in Edit mode, enable Carry Forward, select the survey containing the loop, and choose Q2 as the sender question.

   
   

3. Publish the survey.

4. When a participant reaches the receiver question, it displays answer options based on the participant’s most recent responses to the sender question across all loop iterations.

[!note]
The following applies to both Carry Forward methods:

• By default, Carry Forward uses responses from the participant’s most recent completed, in-progress, or expired session (including the current session).
• If the sender question (or the entire loop containing it) appears after the receiver question in the same survey, only completed or expired sessions are considered.
• For public surveys, only the current session is considered.
• If no answer options are generated, the receiver question is not shown to the participant.

Add Custom Answer Options

You can also add your own answer options to a receiver question alongside the forwarded answer options.

After linking a sender question, add custom answer options directly to the receiver question. The available option type depends on the sender:

1. Text answer options for text-based sender questions.
2. Image answer options for image-based sender questions.

Custom answer option IDs start at 100.

You can also configure how custom answer options are displayed:

• Always Show Custom Options: Displays custom answer options even when the sender question is unanswered or generates no forwarded answer options.
• Forwarded Options Last: Displays custom answer options above or below the forwarded answer options.

When participants reach the receiver question, forwarded and custom answer options are displayed together according to these settings. If neither forwarded nor custom answer options are available, the receiver question is not shown.

Limitations

• For receiver questions, researchers won’t be able to use Suggested Answers or Reverse Order.
• A sender question cannot itself be a receiver question.
• Preview under the survey editor is unavailable when a sender question is in another survey.
• Responses won’t be included in the old format from (Export All Activities Responses as CSV).
• Duplicating a section that contains sender or receiver questions is not supported. Researchers should manually fix any issues that occur after duplicating such sections.
• If a sender question is set for a question that already has answer options, the existing options will be automatically deleted before populating the new ones from the sender question.
• The receiver question’s answers type will be automatically set to Text or Image based on the sender question’s answers type or the sender question type (in case it’s an Image question).
• The sender and receiver questions cannot be in the same looped section.