How to Use Question Branching

Question branching is a tool you can use to expand your qualification possibilities when soliciting information from responders. Branching lets you selectively pose additional questions depending on a supplier's answer to a prior question.

For example, your initial question could ask a supplier to identify any industry trade organizations to which the supplier belongs. Then depending on which organization the supplier chooses, you might follow up with additional questions.

When creating a branching question, you create the lower-level questions first. Once your lower-level questions are created, you can then create your initial question. As you're creating your initial question and its allowable answers, you can use the follow-up question you defined previously.

For example, using the preceding scenario, you'd define questions in the following order

1. First you'd create your follow-up questions. You could define these in any order.

   1. "Have you received any awards from this organization? If so attach documentation."

   2. "How long have you been a member of this organization?"

   3. "Has a representative of your company been on the governing board of this organization within the last five years?"

2. Once you've defined your follow-up questions, you can define your primary question, for example: "To which of the following organizations does your company belong?"

3. As you specify the list of allowable answers to your primary question (in this case, the names of organizations), for the appropriate organizations, you'd link the follow-up questions to that answer.

Note that:

• A single answer might branch to one or more questions.

• Questions exist independently of the initiatives in which they're used. A question can be a primary question in one initiative but a follow-up question in a different initiative.