Skip Logic Best Practices

Skip logic is a powerful way to customize your screener experience and guide participants down relevant paths based on how they answer earlier questions. It can help you screen participants more accurately, reduce survey fatigue, and prevent bias by avoiding questions that aren’t applicable.

In this lesson of our Screener Surveys Deep-Dive, you’ll learn:

• Examples and use cases for skip logic
• Best practices to make the most of skip logic

📹 Prefer watching to reading? This content is available as both an article and a video. Watch our Customer Success Manager, Kaylynn Knollmaier, take you through the content in the video below or keep reading to dive in!

Examples of skip logic use cases

Use case #1: You only want to speak with people in specific roles relevant to your study. In this instance, you can use skip logic to rule out folks who don’t fit your target job criteria. 

Question: What is your current job title? (Pick one)

• UX Researcher
• Product Manager
• Software Engineer
• Other → Skip to Finish (and mark as Reject)

Use case #2: Tailor the screener so experienced users answer detailed follow-up questions, while new users get a different set. In this case, you’ll set up branching logic based on an experience question and send folks to different pages. 

Question: How long have you been using [Product X]? (Pick one)

• A year or more → Continue to Page 3: Experience with Product X
• Less than a year → Skip to Page 4: First impressions and expectations

Use case #3: Show role-relevant questions and exclude students from participation. In this case, you can set up multi-path skip logic to screen based on persona. 

Question: Which best describes your current role? (Pick one)

• I manage a team → Skip to Page 2: Manager workflow
• I work as an individual contributor → Skip to Page 3: IC workflow
• I’m a student → Skip to Finish (and mark as Reject)

Skip logic best practices

1. Understand “reject” vs. “finish.”

A common source of confusion is how “reject” and “finish” logic functions. Here’s the key difference:

• Reject: Marks a participant as unqualified, but does not end their screener journey. They will continue to the next page unless you also add skip logic. "Reject" responses do not send candidates to the end of the screener. Instead, this lowers our auto-generated match percentage. Participants with less than 100% match will be marked as "Unqualified" in your list of participants.
• Finish: Ends the screener for the participant immediately. They’ll only see the questions they’ve already answered, but unless a rejected answer was selected, they may still show as qualified. The "Finish" function does not affect a participant's qualification. Instead, it skips the participant to the end of the screener. Participants do not know they have been sent to the end of the screener. 

💡 If you want someone to stop the screener and also be disqualified, you need to use both “reject” and “finish.”

2. Use page breaks to apply skip logic. 

While it may seem cleaner to keep your screener compact, more pages often lead to clearer logic. That’s because skip logic only activates after all questions on a page are answered. If a critical skip decision depends on a question halfway down the page, your participant will still see the rest of the questions—even if they’ll ultimately be redirected.

Skip logic works on a per-page basis and not a per-question basis, so we typically recommend using just one skip-logic-enabled question per page. This improves accuracy and makes editing and testing easier.

3. Keep it simple.

Complicated logic with lots of “AND” and “OR” conditions can get tricky fast. Try to:

• Minimize the number of logic clauses per page.
• Avoid mixing “AND” and “OR” on the same page when possible.
• Break complex logic across multiple pages instead.

Less complexity = fewer errors and easier troubleshooting.

4. Use “finish” logic wisely.

Sending participants to “finish” can be a great way to end the screener early for those who clearly don’t meet your criteria. But be thoughtful about how and when you use it—only use “finish” when you're 100% sure the participant is not a fit.

If you think they might still be useful or want fuller data on them, let them complete the screener and just use “Reject” to mark them as unqualified. This ensures you don’t lose valuable data prematurely.

5. Avoid using skip logic on multi-select questions. 

Skip logic doesn’t work reliably on multi-select (“pick any”) questions because it evaluates only the first selected answer. If your logic needs to branch based on multiple answer options, use single-select questions (“pick one”) instead and ask them sequentially.

6. Always preview and test.

Before launching your project, test all possible logic paths in the Preview Screener view. Click through different combinations of answers and verify that participants are taken to the right pages or to the end when appropriate.

💡 Make sure to hit “preview screener” and save your screener after making changes!