Overview
Add Choice Group lets you organize answer options into groups within a question. This makes long lists easier to read and easier to answer. You can also randomize answer options, while keeping them inside their groups, which helps reduce bias.
Use Add Choice Group when:
- You have many answer options and want to organize them into clear sections, easier to understand for respondents.
- You want answers to appear in a random order, but only within specific groups.
Note: Adding choice groups and randomizing answers within those groups does not affect raw data. Responses are stored exactly the same way as without grouping. Additionaly, choice group labels don’t appear in any reports.
How to add a choice group
- Go to the Survey Builder.
- Select a question type that supports choice groups (see the list in: Supported question types).
- Click Add choice group.
After you click Add choice group:
- A new group appears with a default answer choice.
- Edit the group name and answer choices.
- Add more groups and answer choices if needed.
For Matrix questions, you can add groups to rows:
- Go to the Rows section and click Add row group:
Note: When adding a Matrix question to your survey, you may notice the Add column group option. Please note that this feature is not the same as Add choice groups, as it affects the raw data structure, allows variable naming, and does not support randomization. To learn more about detailed Matrix question configuration, refer to the following article: Matrix.
How choice groups and randomization work
One of the main benefits of using choice groups is better control over randomization.
Randomizing groups and excluding them from the randomization
You can manage randomization with the following settings:
- Randomize order of groups
This switch appears below the question text field after you add a choice group.
- Randomize choices or rows within group
Use the Randomize group switch inside each group.
You can exclude specific items from randomization:
- Exclude a group from randomization
You can find this switch under each group.
- Exclude individual choices from randomization within a group
Turn this option on for specific choices.
Learn more about randomization in Basic options available for question types.
Randomization with invisible grouping
It is possible to use choice groups only for randomization purpose, without visual group titles. This lets you control the randomization while keeping the question layout clean.
To do this, leave the group name empty. The group name will not appear in the question, but the grouping will still be used for randomization.
Using choice groups in Lists
When you use a list with choice groups and enable randomization, the randomized order is preserved across all questions that use this list.
This means that if the same list is reused in multiple questions, each respondent will see the same randomized order of choices in every question, ensuring a consistent answering experience.
Learn more about Lists in the dedicated article.
Supported question types
You can use Add Choice Group with the following question types:
- Single Response
- Drop-down
- Multiple Response
- Matrix
- List (Expert users only)
Tips and Tricks
Rank Order questions with grouped choices from a list
You can add a Rank Order question and load choices from a list, while keeping the grouping logic preserved in the background, so groups remain hidden from respondents but still affect how choices are handled internally.
Keep Column Labels Visible in Long Matrix Questions
Using choice groups in a matrix question helps keep column labels visible. When a matrix is long and respondents scroll down, column labels can disappear from view. With choice groups, the column labels are automatically repeated for each group, making the question easier to read and answer – even for longer lists.
