Allow respondents to deselect their answer for side-by-side questions with single answers? | XM Community
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Allow respondents to deselect their answer for side-by-side questions with single answers?

  • June 15, 2021
  • 5 replies
  • 1168 views
M

Hey all,
I have a block in my survey that uses the side-by-side (SBS) format where respondents can only select a single answer within each of the seven columns (i.e., there are seven separate questions). I have asked respondents to leave the question blank if it is not applicable. However, if respondents accidentally select an option (that is, they select an option when it does not apply to them), then they are not able to deselect the option - within the data, it looks like they intentionally selected the option. I don't want to make the questions multiple-select because then respondents can select more than one answer in each of the columns. And as far as I know, there is no way to enable the "mutually exclusive" option when the questions are in the SBS layout.
Is there a way around this? A Javascript code, perhaps? Any help/suggestions/etc. would be much appreciated!
Edit: My supervisor does not want me to alter the scales in each question by adding an N/A option.

ThomasW_IronMountain
M

5 replies

M
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Hi megb, did you ever get a solution for this?

TomG
Level 8 ●●●●●●●●
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  • TomG
  • Level 8 ●●●●●●●●
  • January 31, 2023

https://community.qualtrics.com/XMcommunity/discussion/comment/54824#Comment_54824It is possible to do with JavaScript, but quite complex.
It is not clear to me why you wouldn't use a Likert Matrix.

bstrahin
tannerfaragher
QPN Level 5 ●●●●●
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  • tannerfaragher
  • QPN Level 5 ●●●●●
  • April 17, 2023

Hello! One workaround I did was to use a Multiple Choice question and change the answer type to Allow Multiple Answers, and then make each option Exclusive. This will allow them to deselect their answer but still only choose one option. The only downside is it will appear that is is a multiselect (square icon rather than circle). This is the only way I am aware of. Hope this helps!

 

MikeW
Level 5 ●●●●●
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  • MikeW
  • Level 5 ●●●●●
  • April 19, 2023

Hello! One workaround I did was to use a Multiple Choice question and change the answer type to Allow Multiple Answers, and then make each option Exclusive. This will allow them to deselect their answer but still only choose one option. The only downside is it will appear that is is a multiselect (square icon rather than circle). This is the only way I am aware of. Hope this helps!

 

That looks good - though you might be able to then change the square icons to radio buttons. The link below is someone changing radio buttons to be square, so perhaps you might be able to customise that code to do what you need?

Can I style a radio button to be square with text inside? | XM Community (qualtrics.com)

tannerfaragher
Tom_1842
Level 8 ●●●●●●●●
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  • Tom_1842
  • Level 8 ●●●●●●●●
  • April 19, 2023

For Flat layout, to change the squares into circles and prevent the background color change when deselecting, the below CSS can be added to the Style section of the survey’s Look & Feel:

.Skin label.MultipleAnswer>span::before {
    border-radius: 100% !important;
}

.Skin label.MultipleAnswer {
    background: #f1f1f1 !important;
}

For the side by side question, I’ve tackled this before by making the column ‘Multiple Answers’ and adding Custom Validation which can only be passed if the Count of the selected options in the column is Less than or Equal to 1.

A transposed Likert Matrix would also work to have 1 answer per column.

MikeW
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