Google forms come with a lot of great features to make users feel organized no matter for which purpose they want to use it. If you are already using this, then you may have known some of them. In this article, we are going to discuss one of the great features of google forms.
The feature is known as sectioning and branching. It is so much important while creating surveys and question forms for business or educational purposes. if you don’t know about creating sections and branching, then you have a lot to know in this article. So, let’s start with the discussion here below.
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What are sections and branching in google forms?
Well, let’s know about the section first. Think of you as respondents filling a form that appears somehow to you and you find it workable, therefore, you choose to fill-up the form. At the time when you are making the form, if you find it so long or full with irrelevant questions, then you may leave it for sure.
However, no one puts interest in something irrelevant to them. To avoid such situations in surveys and make the users connective until completing the last question, digital survey-making tools integrate this great option.
If you are wondering about this, then here it is for you.
Sections
Form sectioning is a wonderful option that will allow you to break your form. Breaking your forms into sections will help you create more user friendly and easily manageable forms. Because forms sections are specially designed by differentiating the main form into some pages. Therefore, it is called forms sectioning.
As previously said, section branching keeps your forms away from bore users. Eventually, if you have a large number of questions to ask, you shouldn’t include all of them on a single page. Rather you have the smarter option of branching the form into sections which will make the form interesting to fill for the users.
When you make sections in your form, it will allow users to shift to the next section or page when they will fill out the previous section of the form.
Logic branching
Logic branching is another interesting option in which you get most of the survey making tools at present. The option gives life to your forms. By using the logic branch, you can make the form in a way that will present to the respondents with only questions relevant to them.
That means when a respondent fills the form, what will be the next question that appears on them will depend on the previous question they have answered. So, branching lets automated forms in particular pages and send respondents on that according to their answer.
If you have experience in taking online surveys which you find full with specific questions comes with high relevance on your interests. Simply put, in surveys, there offered multiple choice questions and the answer will differ for individual respondents.
For example, think about a scenario where you are filling a form and it asked “Do you teach elementary, middle, or high school?” according to your answer, it will then ask what subject area you teach based on your level.
This is why logic branching is also known as conditional questioning. It will let you create personalized survey forms to make your campaign more successful.
How to make sections in your google forms?
As we have already learned what it means by sectioning in google forms, it’s time to use this option for our own benefits. To create a form section, you have to open the google form window first. The interface and question will appear in front of you and will be considered as section one when you go for creating the next section. Look at the image below and follow the process.
In the image, you are seeing an arrow indicating a divided rectangle in the right option bar. Hover over the mouse on that option and you can see there appears an ‘Add section’.
As you can see the question which I included in the image asking, ‘what do you prefer and the option showing tea or coffee. And then what I did is click on the ‘add section’ and the form has got a new section just like this.
As you can see in the above, it is showing section 2 of 2 and here I ask the respondents, what type of coffee they like most if they choose the coffee option in the previous question. In this way, you can easily make sections in your google forms and make it highly responsive for the respondents.
However, you can duplicate, move, delete and merge sections by the three dot option you can see in the above image.
Move sections
If you want to move any sections in your forms to change their position, then you don’t need to delete and create a newer one. rather you can choose the move option and can move the preferred section to anywhere you want by clicking and dragging it.
Merge sections
When you have created a lot of sections in a particular form and then you feel the necessity of merging some sections to make a sense. No problem, google form is easy to this, you can merge two questions into one through the option ‘Merge with above’.
When merging questions, remind that both of the questions should be inside by side. That means, you can merge questions 1 and 2, 2 and 3 but you cannot merge sections 1 and 3. To do so, you will have to change the position of that question by moving at first and place them alongside and then merge with each other.
Also, merging sections will delete the title and description of the current section and after merging, all the questions will use the same title which was of the above questions.
Duplicate questions
Although, if you want to make the same question that you have created before and want to add that again as another section in your form. Then you don’t have to recreate the question as you can do this simply using the duplicate option in your form.
When you duplicate a question, all the content of the question box including title, description, questions, and answers will get the same view. To duplicate a question, use the three dot option and it will show you the option to duplicate a question.
Remove sections
Removing sections will cause deletion of all the questions including in the sections. If you want to do this, just click on the three dot option in the section that you want to delete and choose delete the section.
How to set a logic branch in google forms?
So logic branching is a required function in online surveys which helps to create a form highly responsive for the respondents. When you use this function in your form, it will let respondents skip such questions which are not relevant to them.
However, in google forms, there is no option called branching. The word is given by the experts to the concept of making forms in this particular way.
to make forms with a logic branch, you have to use the section function in the google form. In the above discussion, we have known all about the section and how can we use it effectively in making online surveys.
creating forms with logic branching is similar to that. It is nothing but differentiating the form into several sections and adding them with the consistency you want to maintain in the form. For your convenience, here is showing the process of making a logic branch in google forms.
First of all, you have to open the google forms where you want to use branching. If you don’t have created a form yet, you should start from scratch by adding the first question, title, and description into that.
After setting up questions, you have to separate the questions where you want to use branching and link it with different sections. That means, once you have done with making questions, you have to create new sections which we have already shown above.
You have to add a section for each question in the form. After adding questions and creating sections in your form, it’s time to link each of the questions to the preferred sections so that respondents will automatically direct to the next question as to how they answered.
Note: logic branching only works for the multiple choice questions and those which have drop-down answers in them.
Set where to go for each response
Now you have to carefully add questions with sections based on the answers. Since multiple choice questions have multiple options, the main reason for using branching is sending respondents to the next questions which you have set before.
To make internal linking in the form sections, you have to choose the question at first. Besides the question bar, there is a three dot option that you have to click. And then, you will get some options from where you have to choose the ‘Go to section based on answer’ option.
From the list of answers, click the drop-down menu and then select the section you want it to connect to when someone chooses it.
In this way, the respondent will directly land to the next section you have chosen for the selective answer. However, respondents can skip the question if they don’t find the options connected to them. But if you want to force an answer and don’t want to skip a respondent to the question, you can make it mandatory to them.
To do this, you have to toggle the ‘Required’ option seen in the image above and make the question required to answer. You have to do this for each question you want to make mandatory to answer to the users.
You have to repeat the above procedure for each question in your form to make branching as well as linking them with each other.
Once you have done with branching and sectioning, click the drop down menu at the bottom of the section and then choose ‘submit form’ from the appeared options.
What are the benefits of logic branching?
There are a lot of benefits of using logic branching in your forms. Whether you are new or experienced with this survey option, if you are really in need of implementing online surveys to accomplish specific purposes, you should have known about this.
To manage big online surveys when you are expecting different types of people to respond to your form. You must create the form in a way so that they can’t get bored by answering irrelevant questions and unwantedly leave the form without completing it.
However, using the logic branch will help you to keep the form away from such situations. For your convenience, here are the benefits of logic branching added to make you realize how it will help you to professionally create surveys.
Give a customized feel to respondents
One of the main advantages which you can get using branching in your form. As we have known that the main reason for using logic branching is allowing respondents to avoid the irrelevant questions and the meantime redirects them to only those questions which are related with.
When respondents will see that the questions offered are highly relevant to them, they must feel better and also fill out a customized form that may only be created for them.
Make it interesting
Undoubtedly, branching adds interest in the form and also presents it interestingly to the users. Because questions added on the form are internally linked among the sections where each answer bears a separate section in it.
Therefore, respondents will direct to your created path and find the form interesting which will lead them to complete the form and submit their answers.
Reduces run time
Since you are allowing respondents to only answer specific questions, it will make the form short and easy with formidable questions. When respondents fill the form, they won’t be bored by discursive questions which will take them to the end of the form quickly.
Reduce drop rate
Branching highly reduces the dropout rates in online survey operations. Branching designed your forms in a way that lures respondents to complete the form intimately. In addition to that, branching will help you to measure success through the responses you have earned in your form.
How many sections can you add a Google form to?
If you have a long survey operation form and you want to manage it completely with google forms, then there may come a question on your mind about how many sections you can add in a single form. In long surveys, it is normal that we have to include a lot of questions and as the form will go for huge respondents to collect information, you have to add so many sections in it.
If you ever wonder to know how many sections you can add in a single form. Then you should know that you can add up to 75 sections in a single form to organize your form by topic in the google form.
Finally, you should consider this significant survey option to own a large benefit and make your survey campaign successful with the highest responses. There is no great method of using branching in online surveys to make it flexible and responsive with relevant questions which respondents also like to answer as well.