About conditions

A condition decides whether participants see a question. The question appears only when its condition is true, for example a follow-up question that only laptop users get. Otherwise it is skipped. You build conditions with the Condition designer in Question settings, and LimeSurvey writes them as an expression that you can also edit directly. Question groups have a condition of their own.

Add a condition to a question

1. Select the question that should appear only sometimes.

2. In Question settings, under Condition designer, click + New logic. The designer opens in the panel.

3. Under Display only if, leave Question selected to use an earlier answer. Participant data uses a field of the participant list instead.

4. Choose the earlier question in Previous questions (1). Only questions that come before this one are listed.

5. Choose the comparison (2): equals, Not equal to, Less than, Less than or equal to, Greater than, Greater than or equal to or Regular expression.

6. Under Reference value (3), choose what to compare with, then the value. Select answer option(s) lists the answer options of the earlier question: pick one or more. The other choices are Free value (constant), Compare to answer of other question and Participant data, and RegExp for the comparison Regular expression.

7. Click + Add condition (4) for another condition, or Apply (5).

LimeSurvey confirms with Condition applied successfully. The question gets a C badge in the editorial area (1), and the condition is listed as Scenario 1 with its expression (2), here ((Q001.NAOK == "A002")): show the question when the answer to Q001 has the code A002.

Combine conditions

• Several answer options in one condition: the question shows when any of them was chosen.
• Several conditions in one scenario: build them with + Add condition. A question with conditions on different earlier questions shows only when all of them are true.
• Several scenarios: the question shows when any scenario is true. To add one, click + New logic again and change Default scenario from 1 to 2. The expression then joins the scenarios with or.

Edit or remove a condition

• Edit the expression in the field under the scenarios, or build a new condition with + New logic.
• To remove a scenario, click the x next to it and confirm with Delete.

Show a question group only sometimes

Click the group in the Structure panel. In Group settings, type an expression into Condition, for example Q001 == "A002". 1 means always. When the expression is false, the whole group is skipped.

Tip: Conditions compare codes, not texts: A002 is the code of the answer Laptop. Turn on ... > View > Question codes to see the codes, and test the survey with the eye icon in the top bar before you activate it.

Next steps

• Validation: make sure the answers you get are usable
• Piping: use answers from previous questions
• ExpressionScript: quick start

FAQ

Why is a question missing from Previous questions?

A condition can only use questions that come earlier in the survey. Move the question you want to use above the one that gets the condition.

The question with a condition still shows in the preview. Why?

Check the answer code in the condition against the answer you gave in the preview. With Question codes on, the code of each answer option is shown next to it.