What Changes When You Edit a Live Survey

The mental model

TIPS treats a survey as a living definition. There's no "publish button" because there's no draft state to publish; every save you make in the Question Editor is the survey the next Traveler will see. That tradeoff buys you something important — your edits land in seconds, no workflow ceremony — in exchange for needing to understand what each kind of edit does to the data already on file.

Three guarantees do all the heavy lifting:

1. Every response snapshots what the Traveler actually saw. Question text and selected option text are copied into the response row at submit time. Editing the survey later never modifies those snapshots.
2. We soft delete, never hard delete. When you remove a question, it's flagged as Inactive and hidden from the editor and from new respondents — but its response data stays intact.
3. In-flight Travelers see a stable survey. A Traveler part-way through the survey when you save an edit finishes the version they started with. They won't accidentally see a new question appear on the next page-turn.

What bumps the surveyVersion (and what doesn't)

The Survey Version increments automatically when you make a structural change. Each response stores the version it was submitted under, so you can always trace which "vintage" of the survey produced any given answer.

What happens to historical responses for each edit

Renaming a question

Old responses keep the original wording in their Question Display snapshot. The Report page detects the rewording and shows a yellow callout above the chart: "the wording of this question changed during data collection." The CSV header for that column appends "[renamed mid-collection]" so anyone you share the file with sees the warning too. If the change was cosmetic, the merged chart is fine; if it was substantive, drill into the per-response view on the Survey Response page to see exactly what each Traveler was asked.

Adding a new question

Old responses have no row for the new question, so the column is empty for them. The Report page bar chart will show zero responses until new arrivals start answering it. Aggregate counts are computed honestly: "72 of 250 respondents answered this question" reflects that the question wasn't there for the first 178.

Removing a question

The question is soft-deleted — gone from the editor and from new respondents, but its existing response data is fully intact. The Report page shows the question with an "Archived" badge in the header; the CSV column gets an "[archived]" prefix. You can decide whether to include that data in your analysis by including or omitting the column.

Adding or removing options on a choice question

Options can be added, removed, or reworded at will. Old responses snapshot the option text the Traveler actually selected, so removing an option doesn't make old responses point at thin air, and renaming an option doesn't retroactively rewrite the answers people gave. The Report page bar chart will list all options it has ever seen for that question. New options begin accumulating counts from the moment they appear; removed options appear with their final count and stop growing.

Changing a field type

Possible but invasive: changing a Dropdown to a Checkboxes field, for example, changes what data the Traveler submits. Old responses keep their original data shape and continue to roll up in their snapshotted form, but the Report page will treat the column under its new type for new responses. If you find yourself reaching for this, consider copying the survey instead — the analytical cohorts will be cleaner.

Reordering questions

The Position is updated on each affected field, and the Report page reorders accordingly. Old responses don't care — their data is stored by field id, not by position — so reorder freely. Same goes for inserting a new question between two existing ones via the "+ Insert below" pill.

Editing the title, instructions, button labels

Pure metadata. Doesn't bump the version, doesn't affect any historical responses, and the change is live on the next survey-taker's page load.

Toggling profile-step fields

Adjusting which profile fields (first name, last name, email, zip code) are required for new respondents doesn't retroactively add or remove identifying data on responses already submitted. Old responses keep whatever profile data they had at the time; new responses follow the new rules.

When to edit vs. when to copy

Edit in place when:

• Fixing a typo or grammatical issue.
• Clarifying ambiguous wording where you want the new and old responses analyzed as a single cohort.
• Adding a new question to capture additional signal alongside the existing data.
• Updating button labels, instructions, or the thank-you message.

Copy the survey instead when:

• You're substantively changing what the survey is asking. ("How would you use this route?" → "Do you support this route?" is a different question.)
• You're switching from one methodology to another (e.g. Selector to Ranker for the same set of routes).
• You want clean cohort separation for stakeholder reporting — "January wave" and "March wave" as two surveys rather than one survey with two versions inside it.
• You're running an A/B variant. Two surveys, two QR codes, compare the results.

The Copy button on the Surveys page does a clean deep-copy — metadata, fields, options, routes — with a new Public Id, a new Survey Version, and is flagged as Active so you can preview the copy before publishing. For a related but more portable pattern, see also the Export / Import JSON workflow on the same page.

What about the survey-print and preview pages?

Both Survey Preview and Survey Print render the current survey definition — the version a Traveler arriving right now would see. Preview is for the Client to walk through the survey end-to-end without writing anything to the database; Print is for producing a one-page PDF-style rendering you can attach to grant documentation or stakeholder hand-offs. Both buttons are disabled when the survey has zero questions.

Common questions about editing live surveys

Can I edit a survey while it's actively collecting responses?

Yes. There is no draft/publish workflow in TIPS — every save is live. The edit applies to all future arrivals; in-flight responses (Travelers part-way through) keep the survey version they started with so their experience doesn't change mid-flow.

What is a surveyVersion bump?

A surveyVersion increment happens automatically when you change something structural — adding a question, removing one, changing options on a Radio/Dropdown/Checkboxes field, or changing field types. Metadata-only edits (title, instructions, button labels, thank-you message, profile-step toggles) do NOT bump the version.

Why does the version bump matter for me?

Two reasons: (1) responses store the surveyVersion they were submitted under, so you can audit which "version" of the survey any given respondent saw; (2) the rename-warning callout on the Report page is driven by version-aware snapshots. Reports always mix versions in aggregate, with a yellow callout when the wording for a single question changed.

If I rename a question, do my old responses get rewritten?

No. Every response data row captured the question text at submit time (questionDisplay snapshot). Renaming the question only affects responses submitted after the change. The Report page surfaces a callout when this happens; the CSV header gets a "[renamed mid-collection]" annotation.

What happens to old responses if I delete a question?

The question is soft-deleted (isActive=0). Existing responses for it are preserved indefinitely so your historical data stays intact. The Report page shows the question with an "Archived" badge; the CSV column gets an "[archived]" prefix.

Can I add a new question mid-collection without invalidating old responses?

Yes. Old responses simply have empty cells in the new question's column — they were submitted before the question existed. The Report page shows zero responses for the new question until new arrivals start answering it.

What about editing options on a multi-choice question?

Options can be safely added, removed, or reworded. Old responses snapshot the option text they actually selected, so editing an option label after the fact doesn't rewrite history. The Report page bar chart will start showing new option labels for new responses while old responses keep their old labels — both visible in the same chart.

Should I copy a survey instead of editing it for substantive changes?

For a small wording fix or a typo: edit in place. For a substantive change in topic or methodology: use the Copy button on /client/surveys to clone the survey, edit the copy, and run the new survey alongside or after the old one. Keeps the analytical cohorts cleanly separated.