Building your Web Forms

Conditional Questions

Conditional questions help you make your form simpler and easier to fill out by hiding questions that are not relevant to specific answers. They are sometimes referred as branching or skip logic.

An easy way to describe it is with an example. Select 'Yes' or 'No' in the form below:

Branching Logic Example:
Do you have a pet?


In this example, the questions "what is your pet's name" and "why not?" are only displayed for the relevant answer to the question "Do you have a pet?".

To help clarify the terms used in the Form Builder, "What is your pet's name" is the conditional question, and "Yes" is the choice that triggers it.

Both sections and questions can be made conditional, using the 'Advanced' tab in the Form Builder. Note that conditionals can only be associated to multiple-choice questions (not free-text questions).

Creating a Conditional Question:

  1. Under your FormAssembly.com account, go to 'My Forms' then click on 'Create a new Form' to open the Form Builder.
  2. Start with the multiple-choice question:
    1. Click 'Add a Question'
    2. Enter the text for the question in the 'Label' field.
    3. Select one of the multiple-choice type: checkbox, radio buttons, drop-down menu or list.
    4. Enter the desired choices.
  3. Now add the conditional question (or a section):
    1. Click 'Add a Question'.
    2. Enter the label and select the desired question type.
    3. Click on the 'Advanced' tab to access the advanced options.
    4. Under 'Conditional Question', select in the menu one of the choices you previously created and click 'Add'.
    5. Close the 'Advanced' panel by clicking on the tab again.
  4. You're done. Refresh the preview and try it.

Creating an 'OR' logic

The default logic applied to conditional questions is the logical 'OR', meaning that if two choices (or more) are set to trigger a conditional question, the question will appear if EITHER choice is selected.

Creating an 'AND' logic

If you need an 'AND' logic, meaning that BOTH choices (or more) must be selected for the conditional question to be displayed, you need to use nested conditional questions.

For instance:

  • Q1. Are you interested in politics? Yes / No
  • Q2. Are you over 18? Yes / No
  • Q3. Would you like to volunteer in the upcoming campaign? Yes / No.

Conditional Question Example

The question Q3. is relevant only if both answers to Q1 and Q2 are "Yes".

Here's how the outline looks like in the Form Builder:
Conditional Question Layout

The first section is conditional to Q1/Yes, and the second section is set to be conditional to Q2/Yes.