Setting up multi-surveys

Multi-survey setup lets you build and manage related surveys, such as monadic variants or multi-country studies, as a single connected project instead of separate, disconnected surveys. In this type of project, you work from one master draft with any number of sub-drafts.

This article covers how to set up a multi-survey project, how the master and sub-drafts relate to each other, and what changes once you start submitting.

Turning a survey into a multi-survey

To start a multi-survey project, start by creating a regular project on the Appinio Platform.

From your project draft, go to the main menu on the top left corner, and select Multi-Survey Setup. This will change the view, and the survey will become organized into:

• Master draft — the shared foundation for all variants
• Sub-drafts — one per variant (e.g., per monad or per country)

How Master- and Sub-drafts work together

When you create your first sub-draft, it starts as an exact copy of the master. You can choose to exclude questions or answers from the sub-draft by clicking the "Exclude" button next to them:

Filters and piping on excluded questions

The master and its sub-drafts stay connected through the rules below, until a sub-draft is submitted:

• Autosave: Changes save automatically, and updates apply across drafts without manual refreshing.
• Target audience: Set a target audience individually for each sub-draft, or apply the same target audience across all of them.
• Independent submission: Each sub-draft is submitted on its own. You don't have to finish and submit every variant at the same time.
• Independent pricing: Each sub-draft is priced separately, based on its own configuration.

Submitting sub-drafts

When you submit a sub-draft:

• It disconnects from the multi-survey setup and becomes its own independent survey object, just like any standalone survey.
• Once the first sub-draft has been submitted, the master draft becomes locked for editing.

After all the drafts have been submitted

The master draft doesn't disappear once every sub-draft has been submitted. It stays in place so that data from all variants can later be combined and viewed together at the master level.

Filters and piping on excluded questions

If a sub-draft excludes a question that another question's filter or piping logic depends on:

• The dependent filter or piping is shown in a disabled state, with a tooltip explaining that it's inactive because the referenced question was excluded.
• The question and item text remain fully active - exclusion only affects the filter/piping logic, not the visible content.
• When the sub-draft is submitted, excluded questions are permanently removed from that survey, along with any filters or piping tied to them.

Preview links

Each sub-draft has its own preview link, and it only shows the questions that will actually be part of that variant's final survey. Excluded or hidden questions never appear in the preview and have no effect on the respondent experience.