Looping

When the same question or set of questions is asked multiple times for different options it is termed as looping. Looping allows you to dynamically "loop" through a set of questions based on responses to a multiple choice question.

When do I use looping?

Consider a scenario where you want to ask the following questions to your respondents:

Q1. Please select the restaurants from which you have ordered pizzas.

Pizza Hut
Dominos
Papa John's
US Pizza

Q2. How would you rate the pizza from <restaurant_name>?

Poor
Below average
Average
Good
Excellent

In this case, Q2 is the follow-up question of Q1 which will appear when the respondent selects answer options in Q1. The Q2 will keep appearing in a loop depending upon the number of options selected in Q1 by the respondent. If the respondent selects two options, then Q2 will appear twice.

Important:

Looping is available only for Multiple Choice Multiple Select (Check Box) type questions.

Enabling Looping will ALWAYS PRODUCE MULTIPLE ROWS for the same response ID - One row for each loop. If you are planning on exporting the data to other statistical packages, please make sure that the other packages are able to handle the data in this format. SPSS does NOT handle the data with multiple rows for each loop.

Cross-tabulation is not supported with looping due to the multiple rows of data.

Surveys with looping logic should be answered in one go. Save and continue or save as you go is not supported with looping logic.

How do I set up Looping?

Before setting up looping, ensure that the rest of the survey is programmed and tested to avoid confusion when testing the loop. Since we want to replace the restaurant name in Q2, we need to use ${piping_text}. Piping text will be automatically replaced with the appropriate restaurant name for each loop.

Select the question you want to apply looping logic to and click on logic.

In the popup, with skip logic selected, switch the looping toggle on.
For each answer option, select the question you would like to loop from the dropdown.
Add piping text which should be shown in the next question which will be looped.