SurveyToGo: Piping Text into Questions, Answers/Topics & Validation Rules

Guide to text piping using SetTextFormat()—pipe question text, answer text, and other values dynamically into questions, answers, topics, and validation rules.

Aug 4, 2026
Knowledge

Title

Answer

Overview

SurveyToGo provides a set of SetTextFormat() methods that allow you to dynamically insert text into questions, answers, topics, and validation messages during an interview.

Text piping is one of the most commonly used techniques in survey scripting because it enables surveys to adapt their wording based on respondent answers, making interviews more personalized and easier to follow.

Using SetTextFormat(), you can display information captured earlier in the survey directly within subsequent questions, answer options, topics, or validation messages.

Common examples include:

Displaying a respondent's name in later questions.
Showing previously selected brands or products.
Referencing earlier answers within follow-up questions.
Creating dynamic validation messages.
Customizing answer or topic text at runtime.

For example, if a respondent selects a specific brand in one question, you can pipe that brand name into a later question, such as:

"What do you think about {Selected Brand}?"

This creates a more natural and personalized interview experience.

Important: Text inserted using SetTextFormat() is displayed during the interview only. The modified text is not stored with the interview data and does not affect the exported survey structure or data.

Setting text objects inside a questions body

Set up the following identifiers {x} for the number of different text objects you wish to pipe.

(each identifier will be replaced with the string you decide)

The following commands are commonly used:

SetTextFormat (Of Which Question?, text for {0}, text for {1}, etc’)

SetAnswerTextFormat( Which Question?, Which Answer?, text for {0}, text for{1}, etc’)

SelectedAnswerText(Which Question?)

Example:

To pipe the text of the selected answer from question 1 instead of {0} and text of the selected answer from question 2 instead of {1}:

SetTextFormat(CurrQues,SelectedAnswerText(1),SelectedAnswerText(2));

Setting text objects inside a questions answer

Using the question in the screenshot below as an example:

Let’s use the previous question’s answer to adjust the following question’s answers.

The script below will take the text from question 4 answer and pipe it where we placed the identifiers.

SetAnswerTextFormat(5,1,SelectedAnswerText(4));
SetAnswerTextFormat(5,2,SelectedAnswerText(4));

This is how it will impact the next question:

NOTE: You can use this method in a variety of ways to make your survey flexible and adjustable.

Best Practices

Text piping is commonly used to dynamically display text in questions, answers, topics, and validation messages during runtime. While the piped text is visible to the respondent, it is not stored as part of the interview data.

If the piped text is generated dynamically—for example, through calculations, randomization, or custom logic—and does not already exist in a survey variable, you should save it separately if you need to know later what was displayed to the respondent.

For example, suppose a question contains four answer options with the following texts:

{0}
{1}
{2}
{3}

During runtime, you pipe in randomly selected products, brands, or calculated values. If the respondent then selects their favorite option, the exported data will only indicate which answer code was selected (e.g., Answer 1, Answer 2, etc.). It will not indicate which text was displayed for each answer at the time of the interview.

To preserve this information, save the piped values in a separate question. A common approach is to create a dummy Open-Ended Grid question with four topics that correspond to the four answer options. Populate each topic with the same values that are being piped into the answer texts.

This ensures that:

The respondent sees the dynamically generated text.
The displayed values are preserved in the interview data.
You can accurately interpret and analyze the respondent's selections after data collection is complete.

As a general rule, whenever dynamically generated text is important for reporting or analysis, store it in a survey variable or dummy question in addition to displaying it through text piping.

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SurveyToGo-Piping-Text-into-Questions-Answers-Topics-Validation-Rules