One of the core benefits to using an experienced market research company to manage your study is the ability to apply routing, logic, branching and piping to your survey. Applying simple skip patterns to a survey will limit a survey respondents’ frustration, help them flow through the survey quicker, and obtain higher levels of engagement. Without adding proper routing to your survey, you stand the risk of respondents straightlining or dropping out of surveys, which will significantly diminish your response rates.
Routing in surveys offers the ability of the writer to skip questions not applicable to respondents. Depending on an answer to a prior question, the survey designer knows the following question would not apply to the user. For example, let’s say the respondent answers “no” to the question “have you ever been to our store before?” The next question in the survey is “how many times do you typically visit our store in a given year?” Respondents who answer “no”, they have never been to the store, would find this question confusing because they do not visit typically, it’s their first visit. With survey programming you can design the routing to skip the second question if the answer to the first is “no.”
Survey piping is a feature that allows you to personalize questions and answers within a survey by carrying forward a respondent’s previous response into later parts of the survey. In other words, piping inserts answers or custom data directly into follow-up questions, creating a smoother and more engaging experience for participants.
For example, if your first question asks, “What city do you currently live in?” and the respondent answers “Chicago”, a piped follow-up question might read: “How satisfied are you with public transportation in Chicago?” Instead of a generic phrasing, the question now feels specific and relevant, which often increases survey completion rates.
There are two main kinds of survey piping to be aware of:
Answer Piping (pulls in a response from a previous question). Example: If someone selects “Blue” as their favorite color, you can later ask, “Would you purchase a blue jacket?”
Variable Piping (pulls in external data or preloaded variables such as name, company, or location). Example: “Hi Sarah, how satisfied are you with the services provided by [Credit Union XYZ]?”
When setting up piping in surveys, here are a few examples of how piping might show up in piping survey questions and answers:
By embedding context into each step, survey piping transforms a traditional questionnaire into a dynamic, respondent-centered experience.
Routing immediately eliminates confusion and frustration for the survey taker (the user.) This helps with completion rates and limits drop outs. Routing also limits the time to complete the survey. If respondents are forced to read through a series of questions which are not applicable, it adds considerable time to the length of the survey.
There is a difference between routing and piping. Piping enables the survey designer to take the information from a prior question and input it into the survey later in the experience. For example, let’s say the respondent answers “McDonald’s” as their favorite fast food restaurant. Later in the survey, the study covers satisfaction with the respondent’s favorite fast food restaurant. Rather than asking them to rate their “favorite fast food restaurant” in general, piping allows the survey writer to input McDonald’s directly into the question wording seamlessly and automatically. This helps keep respondents engaged in the survey, where the survey actively listens to their feedback and customizes the next questions accordingly.
Adding piping makes your survey feel more conversational and personalized. Instead of answering generic questions, respondents see their own answers reflected back in the survey, which can improve engagement and reduce drop-off rates. It also allows researchers to tailor follow-up questions more precisely, leading to richer and more actionable data.
The ability to add routing, logic, branching, and piping is a key benefit of hiring a market research firm to manage your survey. Market research companies have access to advanced survey design platforms which allow for these levels of customization. Questions about your next survey project? Contact Drive Research at [email protected] or by getting a quote below.
