How do I set up conditional logic for questions with multi-select answers

jbardol

I have created a form with questions with multi-select answers.

1. Select your top five skills from the list below
2. The reader selects five from the list (from a total of 30 options, listed as horizontal check boxes)
3. For each skill selected from the list of 30, please rate your competency level, e.g., 1. Acquired, 2. Experienced 2. Mastered 4. Thought leader

So if the person responding selects MDM-IBM Infosphere, Data Modeling – Erwin, Data Modeling-ER Studio, Data Modeling – Enterprise Architect, Database-DB2 (when responding to question #1/2), is there a way to set up the conditional logic to display question #3 five times and capture five different answers? Or do I have to set up 30 separate questions and conditions if response to # 2 is not blank, display #3?

Any of this make sense? Is what I am asking even feasible?

sharkasits

@jbardol If you want you could have 5 question #3s as long as you can be clear that they need to answer for the same order they are in the horizontal check boxes and then use some formulas to tie the response to the appropriate skill set. From a clarity to the user perspective though you're probably better off setting up the 30 questions and using the logic in the form to show the related question when the checkbox is checked.

Colleen Patterson

@jbardol

There is not really a good way to select the same data answer to be related to multiple data points.

You should think through how you are wanting to map your data: example if they choose the skill of: MDM-IBM Infosphere, is this something that you want to track across all respondents as "MDM-IBM Infosphere"? Or does it really only matter what the person is stating as their top skills?

Example:

1. You could make a form where the LOGIC of choose your top 5 skills - MULTISELECT enabled menu, would then have pop up fields display if their corresponding answer is chosen. This would require 30 columns to be created. In Logic, you will set your source column to IS ANY OF, to have only the appropriate values display for the question 3 skill level. In this case, to keep your information from becoming overwhelming, I would recommend using a meta data sheet to pull results. This is the 30 columns / logic responses you are asking.
2. instead of 30 different columns, you could also organize it as top skill 1, skill level for Top skill 1, this would give you 10 data columns (1 for the skill MDM-IBM Infosphere, 1 for the proficiency). this may be a better way to organize the information. You could pair this with a Metadata sheet where you do lookup / response to fill a skill grid if you want to be able to easily see anyone that has responded to that skill at any level.

Fundamentally when using smartsheet the first thought is in data organization and goals; as well as program limitations.