Instruction

An Instruction object allows for the display of text and/or images without requiring input from survey respondents. Instructions are useful for section preambles, the presentation of concepts, or as a way to combine more than one question on a page group into what appears to the user to be one question.

By default, all new surveys contain a “Start” and “End” Instruction object. The “End” object has the Finish Action set to “finished successfully” to ensure that the survey responses are saved as a successfully completed record in the dataset. While you can make changes to these objects as you wish, always bear in mind that if there’s no finish action set in the survey, there’ll be no complete records in the dataset.

Adding an Instruction

Here’s how to add an Instruction object to the survey flowchart:

Add an Instruction object to the flowchart. In Survey Editor (Legacy), drag it from the Toolbox, or double-click it. In Survey Editor (Beta), drag the Instruction card from the Add to survey toolbar, or click it to add it at the end

Appearance

By default, an Instruction will appear on a single page with no input required from the respondent (beside clicking the Next button). Use the Rich Text Editor to format the question text as required, and page groups to display the instruction on a page with other questions.

You can Preview the survey at any stage to see how the object appears and behaves in the context of the survey.

Question formats

Format	Description
Text Only	Content displayed on screen with no input required from respondents. This is the default.
Video	Plays a video that the respondent must watch to the end before they can continue. See Video format.

Video format

The Instruction - Video format plays a video, and the Next button only becomes available when the video has finished. Use it when respondents must watch something, such as an ad or a concept video, before answering questions about it.

To set it up:

Add an Instruction object to the flowchart, then change its Question Format to Instruction - Video
Upload the video file to the survey’s Resources, or host it somewhere else
In the videoURL control (Video URL in Survey Editor (Beta)), enter the address of the video file, for example an .mp4 file
Optionally, set the video’s size with the Width and Height properties, for example 100% or 640px
Add any Question Text and Helper Text to show with the video, then save and preview the survey

What the respondent sees:

The video, with a play button over it. Once it starts, the play button disappears.
They can’t pause, skip ahead, change the volume or replay the video
Next is unavailable until the video ends. If they go Back to this page, they have to watch it to the end again.

Things to know:

The question stores 1 for everyone who reached the page. It doesn’t record whether they watched the whole video.
Show Next Button and Finish Action aren’t available for video instructions, so a video can’t be the last page of the survey.

Multimedia

You can add images, video, and audio to the Question Text.

Data structure

Although there’s no input required from respondents, Instructions will still appear as a variable in a dataset. Those who weren’t presented with the Instruction will be indicated by a blank (null) cell.

Question Format	Variable Type	Example Response
Text Only	Integer	Start = 1

Display logic

Often in surveys, there are questions that aren’t applicable to a certain subset of respondents. Survey Shaper allows you to specify the display logic via filters so that only those who meet the filter criteria will be presented with the question.

Here’s how to create a question filter:

Select the question object in the survey flowchart
In either the Quick Update Box or Question Properties Tab, click on the Define Filter box
Enter the filter criteria by typing directly in the box (remember to preface all question references with ”@”), or by using the Filter Builder button on the far right of the property box in Survey Editor (Legacy), or Open rule builder in Survey Editor (Beta)
Save the survey — the filter description will now be visible in the survey flowchart (if filters are turned on in the flowchart display options)

All questions referred to in the filter need to precede the filtered question. Further, a filtered question can’t be placed on the same page as any questions used to define the filter.

If you have a block of questions requiring the same filter criteria, you may want to use a Skip object to skip over the block of questions, as multiple filters may negatively impact the speed of the survey.

Finish actions

For Instructions, you must specify the action required when the survey respondent reaches that question:

Next Question (default) — continue to the next question within the survey
Finished Successfully — use at the end of a survey to record as a successfully completed record in the dataset
Finished Exclusion — record as a non-qualifier in the dataset
Finished Quota Full — record as a quota full in the dataset
Finished Expired — typically used on an instruction object that informs the respondent that the survey has closed

Here’s how to set the Finish Action:

Add or select an instruction object in the survey flowchart (close the Quick Update box if it has popped up)
In the Properties Pane Question tab, click on the Finish Action field
Select the required finish action from the dropdown box
Save the survey

Page groups

You can create page groups to display multiple questions on a single page.

Remove Next button

In surveys where the final object is an Instruction, the Next button should be removed and the Finish Action should be set to something other than Next Question.

Here’s how to remove the Next button:

Add or select the Instruction object in the survey flowchart (close the Quick Update box if it has popped up)
In the Properties Pane, uncheck the Show Next Button property
Save the survey

Where the final action is a Transfer object, don’t remove the Next button on an Instruction preceding the transfer event.