Progress pages

The progress pages tag overrides the page count for a given set of pages with a startgroup and endgroup as it relates to calculating the position of the progress bar. This allows Survey Programmers (SPs) to more accurately show a survey taker's place in the survey by accounting for skipped pages, when an approximation of the number of pages that are to be skipped is a known quantity.

Consider a typical looped question:

3BRANDS. Three brands respondent uses 
type: checkbox
optsfrom: BRANDS_LIST 
selectby: counts
maxgroups: 3
 
startgroup: NPS_BLOCK
 
block: <<END
 
15_%%ID%%. On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend %%TEXT%% to a friend or colleague?
class: nps
headings: Not likely<br> at all, Extremely<br> likely
 
newpage
 
16_%%ID%%. Why?
type: textbox
 
END
list: BRANDS_LIST {if anyChecked($Q3BRANDS,[id])}
 
endgroup: NPS_BLOCK

In this example, the BRANDS_LIST is omitted, but suppose that it contains a great many options, say 50 or more. The progress bar only looks to the current page and divides it by the total number of pages, despite the fact that the respondent will only see a tiny fraction of the pages in the NPS_BLOCK group. This ultimately leads to an inaccurate progress bar. The larger the proportion of total survey pages that are skipped in this manner, the less accurate the progress bar becomes.

In this case, it so happens that we know the total number of pages that the respondent can see in NPS_BLOCK: 6 (2 pages in each block, 3 block iterations). To restore clarity to the progress bar, include the progress pages tag on the group containing the block widget, and specify the number of pages that ought to count for the group:

3BRANDS. Three brands respondent uses 
type: checkbox
optsfrom: BRANDS_LIST 
selectby: counts
maxgroups: 3
 
startgroup: NPS_BLOCK
progresspages: 6
 
block: <<END
 
15_%%ID%%. On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend %%TEXT%% to a friend or colleague?
class: nps
headings: Not likely<br> at all, Extremely<br> likely
 
newpage
 
16_%%ID%%. Why?
type: textbox
 
END
list: BRANDS_LIST
 
endgroup: NPS_BLOCK

The progress bar now treats the entire NPS_BLOCK group as if it counted for 6 pages, because that is the number of pages an individual respondent sees.