Direct references point to a specific survey question or one of its subparts — think of it as the address of any given field within the survey. Use the following conventional letters to refer to a question, subquestion, or answer.

Examples of Direct References

• PQ1 — the first prequalification question
• PQ1A1 — the first answer on the first prequalification question
• Q1 — the first question
• Q1A1 — the first answer on the first question
• Q1SQ1 — the first subquestion of the first (matrix) question
• Q1SQ1A1 — the first answer on the first subquestion of the first question

Examples in use:

• [Hide if PQ1A1] — hides the entire question for respondents who selected A1 on the first prequalification question.
• [Q1A1] — pipes in the respondent's answer text. For example, if A1 on Q1 was "Toyota", the question "You mentioned your favorite car brand is [Q1A1]. Please share why." would appear as "You mentioned your favorite car brand is Toyota. Please share why."

Programming Direct References

References track the same element even if its position changes — for example, if you add a new question in front of Q1, [Show if Q1A1] automatically becomes [Show if Q2A1]. The same applies to subquestions and answers.

If you delete an element that's referenced in aytm Logic, the reference will be highlighted in orange and a ? is added in front of it (e.g. [Show if ?Q1A1]), indicating it now points to a different question and needs your attention. A survey cannot be launched with broken references.

Supported Question Types

Learn more about References in our Basic aytm Logic course!