Reconciliation Elements Follow

Sometimes you may need to do a given number of elements following the Edit Element if a condition is met. This Edit Element resolution option is Reconciliation Elements follow this.

Similar to Loop back to Prior Element, you can select n elements (1-5) or a Marker destination. See About Skips, Edits, and Markers.

• If the condition is met, those elements will be completed.
• If the condition is not met, they will be skipped over.

Tip: This can be used like a Skip Element and thought of as ‘If x condition, then do...’ which is sometime more convenient to program than a ‘‘If x condition, then skip...’.

Reconciliation Elements Follow Example

For example, if you had the following set of questions, you can use an Edit Element with the Reconciliation Elements follow this option to conditionally do the next three questions depending on response to the lead-in question:

1. Have you ever smoked a cigarette?" (Variable name = CIG, with Yes=1 and No=0 responses)
   1. How many cigarettes have you smoked in the last 30 days?
   2. How many cigarettes did you smoke yesterday?
   3. On a scale of 1 to 10, how hard would it be for you to stop smoking?

. To add this branching, you would add an Edit Element with the following options:

1. If: Enter condition, CIG = 1.
2. Display message: Leave blank (optional).
3. Perform without message: Check this box to have no message displayed.
4. Reconciliation process: Select Reconciliation Elements follow this.
5. Number of elements: Select Marker.
6. Marker: Enter marker name, END_CIG.
7. Item IDItem IDs are available for Skip, Edit, Information, and Section Header Elements. They must be unique and may contain up to 35 characters; certain special characters (i.e., ampersands, backslashes, curly braces, and commas) are disallowed. If an Item ID is not assigned a custom name, the Validate function will automatically assign the ID using the format, <element-type>-<sequence number>.: Enter custom identifier (optional).
8. Select OK.

For these options entered, the elements until the end of the smoking section (until the Marker named END_CIG is reached) will only be encountered when CIG = 1; these elements will be skipped over when CIG ^= 1.