Conditional sections

Any Section in your question guide can be shown only to participants who match a rule. The rule, the section's Section logic, is built from one or more conditions on what you already know about the participant: their screener answers, their answers to earlier survey questions in the interview, or which recruitment quota they fall into.

If the conditions match, the participant sees the section. If they don't, Strella skips the section.

Set up Section logic

Steps

1. Open the section's logic

   In Build, select the Section, then open Section logic. The dialog opens with the section's label at the top (e.g. "Tracking habits"), so you know which section you're editing.

2. Add a condition

   Click Add condition. Each condition reads as a sentence (If [field] is / is not [answer]) and can reference:

   • Screener answers: anything the participant answered on the screener.
   • Earlier questions in this interview: any survey question in a section above this one.
   • Quota assignment: which recruitment quota the participant falls into (is in / is not in).

   For a multiple-choice, rating, or screener choice question, one condition can name more than one answer: open the answer menu and check each one you want. is matches a participant who chose any of the answers you selected; is not matches one who chose none of them. So a single condition can say "Product purchased is Frozen pizza or Frozen desserts." Disqualifying answers stay listed but can't be selected, because a participant who gave one is screened out before the interview.

   For Slider answers, the condition compares against a threshold instead: above, below, or equal to a value.

   For an NPS answer, pick groups (Promoter, Passive, Detractor), individual scores, or a mix of both, or compare the score against a threshold. Groups cover most cases, such as asking a follow-up only of detractors; a threshold handles a cut like "9 or higher".

   

   When the gating field is a multiple-choice question, a single condition can name several answers at once: the participant matches if they picked any of the answers you choose, so you don't need a separate condition per answer.

3. Combine conditions with and / or

   When you add more than one condition, choose how they combine. and means the participant must match every condition. or means matching any one of them is enough.

4. Resolve warnings before publishing

   The builder flags two common mistakes before you can publish:

   • Contradictory conditions: a combination that can never be true (e.g. "role is PM and role is designer").
   • Conditions that exclude every participant: based on the screener you've published, the section would never run for anyone.

   Fix or remove the conditions to clear the warning.

The outcome is always the same: Then: Show this section. Section logic decides who sees the section; it never changes the content.

The ordering rule

A condition can only reference a survey question that appears earlier in the guide than the section it gates, because the answer has to exist before the decision point. The builder enforces this; you won't see later survey questions in the field picker.

The big limitation: structured answers only

Conditions work on structured answers: multiple choice, sliders, ratings, NPS, and screener picks. Ranking, matrix, open text, and media upload answers can't be used. Conditions can't branch on what a participant said in open conversation. "If they mention price, go to the pricing section" isn't supported.

Workaround: ask it as a Multiple choice survey question first ("Which of these matters most to you?"), then set the Section logic to check that answer.

(Within a single question, the moderator's follow-ups do react to what was said. See Follow-up guidance. What you can't do is route the path through sections based on free speech.)

Things to know

• Conditions are sticky. They're evaluated from data that doesn't change mid-interview (screener answers and quota membership), so a participant who leaves and comes back sees exactly the sections they saw before.
• Variants and conditional sections are different tools. Conditional sections route specific participants to specific content based on what you know about them. Randomization routes participants at random for A/B testing. Use the right one for the job.
• Multiple conditional sections compound. A participant only sees a section if that section's own conditions match. Heavy condition use can quickly narrow who sees what, so test the real path by going through a share link as a participant would. (Preview shows every section regardless of routing, so it won't reflect the conditional path. See Preview your interview.)

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