Filter questions, branching questions, or skip logic questions are questions that you ask to determine if a later section of questions will be relevant for your participant to answer or not. They are often a type of demographic question that can be used to shorten your survey length.
Some surveys include questions that are only relevant to a certain subsection of the population. In this case, it can be helpful to include questions towards the beginning of your survey that determine the eligibility of your participants to answer other questions later on. Then, you can filter the questions so participants only answer those that are relevant to them.
For Example…
If you are conducting a survey on the perceived effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on education, you would want to ensure that all participants are qualified to take your survey. To accomplish this, you could start with a few filtering questions before covering your key topic questions:
- Are you the caretaker of any children in K-12 school?
- Have your children’s school been closed due to COVID?
- Overall, how satisfied are you with how your children’s school has been handling instruction since the school closure?
The first two questions allow you to filter out respondents who are not dealing with school closures. This allows you to target those who will be able to answer the key topic question when you pose it.
(Example adapted from Pew Research Center, 2020)
Demographic Questions
In the previous section, we discussed demographic questions including the advantages and disadvantages of using them. Filter questions are often a type of demographic question, and they are the only instance where it could be good practice to put a demographic question at the beginning of your survey!
If your survey includes demographic questions but does not use them as filter questions, you typically want to include them towards the end of your questionnaire, as they are often both personal and uninteresting.
Putting personal questions at the beginning of a questionnaire might be considered invasive or annoying. Participants might not answer honestly or fail to respond at all. Try to build a rapport with your respondents over the course of the survey before you ask personal questions. If you can do this well, by the end of the survey participants may begin to feel more invested in the survey and will be more likely to respond to your more personal or sensitive questions.
Ethics Check
One demographic question we often see up front is regarding the respondent’s age. The filter will either let the respondent into the remainder of the survey if they are of the appropriate age (usually 18 yrs+, or 21 yrs+) or thank them for their interest if they are not of age.
One benefit of this type of question is make sure that the respondents are indeed the demographic or other group that you are seeking to research.
