Concerned that respondents aren't able to return to previous questions and change their answers? Here's why they really shouldn't do that!
So you've seen that respondents can't go back to previous questions to change their answers on our platform? We assure you that this is absolutely intentional, and for good reason, too!
Here are some reasons and examples of situations where having a 'back' button makes answering your survey a little more confusing:
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When answering surveys, respondents can sometimes overthink their responses. What we would like to capture is their first, instinctive response (which is likely to be the most honest as well).
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An example of a situation where a 'back button' complicates matters, is when we have unaided questions (open ended questions) followed by aided questions (multiple choice or similar types of questions).
For example, let's take a survey which has an open ended question asking "What are the telco brands you're aware of? Please list them all." followed by a multiple choice question asking "Which of the following telco brands have you heard of before?" with a list of telco brands for them to choose from.
What we don't want is for respondents to see the list in the aided question and realising 'Oh I know that brand too, I should include it in the previous open ended question'. This would impact data accuracy as we only want brands that are genuinely at the top of their minds, unprompted, in an unaided question. -
Another situation where a 'back' button makes things complicated is when there's a question in the survey with display logic (where only respondents who fulfill certain criteria should be able to view a question).
For example, let's take a survey where those who select Option A in Q1 should go to Q2, and those who select Option B should skip ahead to Q5. If a respondent selected Option B in Q1 and skipped ahead to Q5, then changed their mind and went back to Q1 and selected Option A, they would now see new questions they didn't see before. They're now looking at Q2 to Q4, which they didn't see when they selected Option B earlier.
Respondents could then get confused, wondering if there's a mistake in the survey they need to report, or if they should have stuck to Option B, which had been their first response.
These are just a few reasons why you won't find a 'back' button on Every surveys! If you're not quite convinced and need a little more explanation, click on the chat bubble on the right to get in touch with us, and we'd be happy to help!