How do I interpret the Paths Analysis in Tree Testing?

Table of contents

This section covers how to use the Paths analysis to:

View Paths per task

This analysis displays Paths one task at a time.
Use the task selection dropdown list in the top section of the screen to switch to the task you want to analyze.
Alternatively, use the arrow buttons to the left and right of the dropdown list to move to the previous/next task.

For each task, Paths contains:

The task’s text and the correct answers.
The Paths table contains in the following order: the success value of the path, the number of respondents who took this path (total + percentage), and the path itself.
By default, the paths are ordered by the number of Respondents in descending order; however, the order can be changed by clicking the headers Success and Respondents.
The table is sorted by the column with an arrow in its header. Arrow down means descending order and arrow up means ascending order.
Click the value of Respondents to display a list of all respondents who took the chosen path. To easily manipulate these respondents in the Respondents tab, click Add respondents to selection list.
In the path, the right arrow means the respondent picked one of the children of the previous label and the left arrow means they backtracked.

The Success column marks which type of result the path represents. It can have one of the following values:

Direct success – the respondent went directly for the correct answer.
Indirect success – the respondent took a different path and backtracked before going for the correct answer.
Direct failure – the respondent went directly for a wrong answer.
Indirect failure – the respondent took a different path and backtracked before going for a wrong answer.
Direct skip – the respondents skipped the task immediately without clicking anywhere in the tree first.
Indirect skip – the respondent explored the tree before choosing to skip the task.

Paths are analyzed per task; select the one that you want to delve into.

Apply the filter to view the type of paths you’re interested in.