Conditional Navigation

One of the behaviors that can be specified when a question is defined allows for certain responses to trigger the cursor to jump to a target when [Next Field] or [Previous Field] is selected. Within a repeating question group, a target question within the same group but on or before the current question, triggers navigation to the target question on the next repeat.

Conditional branching covers the case where a response to a particular question eliminates the need to answer a number of subsequent questions. During data entry, when you enter the predefined response value to the question with conditional branching defined for it, the cursor automatically moves to the specified target field. You can override the default navigation and enter values in the skipped fields by repositioning your cursor using the mouse or the [Previous Field] keys.

As an example of conditional navigation, consider the question, "Have you ever been pregnant?" If this is defined to have conditional branching, when you enter "NO", the cursor passes over a group of pregnancy-specific questions to the first question and question group not pregnancy-related.

Conditional branching functionality also extends to numeric, time, and date fields. Oracle Clinical supports three methods of conditional navigation, based on the value entered: greater than, less than, or equal to the provided branch value.

Indicator questions automatically have the conditional navigation feature enabled. The target question default is either to the first enterable question following the question group associated with the indicator question, or the last enterable field of a question group if that is the last question group on the form. Standard navigation into the question group occurs when the response value entered equals the indicator value for the indicator question.

As an example of an indicator question, consider the question, "Do you have a history of allergies?". If this indicator question has a defined indicator value of "YES", and you enter "NO", the cursor jumps to the first field following the group of allergy history questions.