Advanced branching in Survey123 for ArcGIS

Question

I'm designing a webform in Survey123 for ArcGIS which requires those responding to the survey to identify bus stops along a route, one by one, to essentially submit the full sequence of stops so that the bus route can then be mapped.

To simplify, the flow of the survey is as follows:

1. The respondent selects a bus service from a drop-down of pre-defined options (the list of selectable services will be derived from a previous survey delivered through Survey Monkey).

2. The respondent then identifies which stop along the route sequence they are about to input. The stop number is selected from a drop-down list of pre-defined responses.

3. Finally, the respondent then provides the stop location by entering a data point on the Esri-powered geopoint map widget.

4. After submitting the data point, the respondent has the option to return to the form and select the next stop along the route and then once again provides the location on the geopoint widget. The idea is that the user will keep returning to the form to input data points until they have entered all points along a bus service.

Ideally, there would be a singleline-text question between 1 and 2 asking the respondent how many stops there are along their chosen service from Step 1. However, there does not seem to be a way to link such a singleline-text question so that the numerical value inputted into it would inform the possible options in the drop-down question at Step 2. As such, i have had to set up Step 2 so that the pre-defined options range from 1-30 as i do not know the highest number of stops amongst the bus services, and a maximum of 30 should cover all possible ranges of numbers of stops as the services are expected to be quite rural (although i cannot be sure at this stage where the services go through, nor how frequent stops are along them).

I have been informed that setting up a drop-down question to have options which are defined by setting a conditional relationship with a previous singleline-text question is possible within Survey Monkey, and that this relationship is referred to as "advanced branching," which from my understanding dictates how often a respondent gets asked a question depending on a value they provided earlier in the survey. I've also been told that it is not possible to build advanced branching into a Survey123 form as the feature class in a geodatabase which has been generated for Survey123 must have a set number of fields defined before data entries are added to it. Is this true? Can i design the survey so that the respondent can only select stop numbers (and assign locations for said stop numbers) based on the total amount of stops they will have identified in the previous answer within the survey?

While i have been using the web browser version of Survey123 for ArcGIS to design the webform, if this functionality can only be added through the advanced desktop version (Survey123 Connect) then i have been trying it out and have some proficiency with that version.

Answer 1

Survey123 'repeats' should do what you're after.

I don't think they're available in the web form designer, but if you're willing to use Survey123 Connect to design your form, then I reckon that 'repeats' would do the job for you.

The documentation (linked above) explicitly states:

An XLSForm can repeat a group of questions multiple times. Examples of how repeats are used include ... Capturing multiple images or geopoints in a single survey

and

To define the number of repeats in Survey123, set a repeat count

and

Provide a numeric value for the number of repeats ... You can also provide a question name or calculation that returns a numeric value.

Repeat sections can include multiple questions and can include a geopoint question

In the database, the results of a repeat are stored in a separate (related) table, or if using a geopoint, in a related feature class.