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We inherited a survey that contains a fairly large Matrix table (50 questions with a five point scale). The Matrix table is a list of skills associated with a discipline and respondents need to rate how important that skill is to them.  The matrix table question, is followed by this text-box question:

You identified X, Y, Z skills as very important or important, Please tell us why. 

“X,Y,Z” above uses piped text to display the question text only if users identify a skill as very important or important (scale point 1 or 2), but when we test the survey we get many blank values when users select neither of those options. I looked at the code and I see where they how it is making questions display, but i do not see how it is preventing the blanks. Can advice? I can post the code if you like.

Yes, this is a common issue when using piped text in follow-up questions without also applying display logic to the follow-up question itself. While the piped text dynamically fills in only the selected “very important” or “important” skills (scale point 1 or 2), Qualtrics will still display the follow-up open-ended text box regardless—unless you explicitly set display logic.

To fix the issue of blank text box responses:

  1. Go to the follow-up question in your survey.

  2. Apply Display Logic so that it shows only if at least one skill in the matrix has a value of 1 or 2.

    • This requires setting multiple OR conditions, one for each matrix statement where scale = 1 or 2.

    • Example: “Display this question if Skill A = 1 OR Skill A = 2 OR Skill B = 1 OR Skill B = 2, etc.”

This logic ensures the open-ended text box only appears if the respondent has marked at least one skill as important or very important, avoiding blanks from those who skip or rate all skills as less important.

If you're using JavaScript to generate the piped list (X, Y, Z), that can stay—but it won’t control visibility. Display logic must be set at the question level for functional gating.

I hope this helps.

regards,

Thank you so much. This makes sense. I was so focused on the piped text and code that I didn’t consider that you also needed the relatively simple fix of display logic. Thanks again.

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