branching logic for likert questions in survey list?

Question

SP2010. I have a survey list with a bunch of likert questions. The typical stuff, "was the staff friendly?", "Is the place clean enough for you?". The default 1-5 likert choices are in use.

What I want is, if any of the answers in the series are the "1" (i.e. worst), I'd like the conditional branching to kick in and have the next question be "Please tell us why you feel things are so bad".

I know that OOB, SP2010 does not support branching logic on a likert series. Before I burn up a lot of investigation time, though, I'm wondering if folks out there have a jQuery / C# way to do this. I did a quick 'view source' on a question that does have branching, but nothing jumped out at me screaming "doBranching()" or whatever. But I gotta figure this has been done before.

O wise SP community, is there a known means of accomplishing this?

Answer 1

I hate answering my own questions, but here goes: The internets indicate there just ain't no OOB solution. So I cooked up one that works. There's too much code for me to post in the answer, so here is the summary:

• After the likerts I put in a single checkbox question "Were results unsatisfactory (hidden)". The "(hidden)" text is in the question purely to let the folks who read the results know its a hidden field.
• Use SPD to manually edit the form. (might be possible to achieve with CEWP, too)
• Add jQuery to the form (not critical, but sure makes coding the next bits easier)
• Add a button and labeled it "Next!" (or whatever). Place it alongside the original "Next" button.
• Hide (but do not delete) the original Next button.
• Hide (but do not delete) the "Were results unsatisfactory (hidden)" question.
• Create a javascript 'isUnsatisfactory()' function to read over the likert values and determine if to check or not check the hidden question checkbox, and then click the original hidden "Next" button.

So that's what I did. It's a bit of a kludge, but it did work.