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
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First you'd create your follow-up questions. You could define these in any order.
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"Have you received any awards from this organization? If so attach documentation."
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"How long have you been a member of this organization?"
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"Has a representative of your company been on the governing board of this organization within the last five years?"
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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?"
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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:
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A single answer might branch to one or more questions.
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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.