Page breaks in the study editor ⏎

Page breaks control where participants advance to a new piece of content (usually a question, but could be a video, image, consent agreement, etc) during your screener or survey inside an Ethnio study. By default, questions flow continuously. Add breaks to control pacing, group related questions, or separate sensitive content like consent.

Two modes of page break behavior for participants

When presenting your study link or intercept to participants, you can control how they move through it using one of two page break modes.

Automatic (the recommended setting) displays content one section at a time, guiding participants through the material in a structured, sequential flow without any extra setup on your part.
Manual, on the other hand, gives you full control to decide exactly where each page break appears by adding or removing them directly in the editor, making it ideal for presentations where you want a custom pacing or non-standard content structure.

All-in-one? Use manual mode

If you want every question on a single page that scrolls down to one submit button, use manual mode.

Adding a page break

Hover over + Add page break when it appears between content objects.
A dashed Page break divider will appear between the two questions, confirming the new page boundary.

Removing a page break

Hover over the Page break divider you want to remove.
Click the × button on the right side of the pill.
The break is removed and the surrounding questions return to the same page.

ℹ️ Only eligible page breaks can be removed. Breaks created automatically by the system are locked. See below for details.

🔒 Locked page breaks

Some page breaks are set automatically and cannot be deleted. These appear as a solid Page break locked by [reason] label with a lock icon. Hovering the info icon shows a tooltip explaining why.

Locked breaks exist to protect your study's flow, participant experience, and logic integrity. There are four content types that trigger them.

Consent content always lives on its own page. Participants need to read and respond to consent in full, without other questions sharing the screen.

Every consent block creates two locked breaks:

Above the consent block prevents any prior content from appearing on the same page.
Below the consent block ensures the next question always starts on a fresh screen.

These breaks cannot be removed. If you need to adjust what surrounds a consent block, reorder your content in the editor so unrelated questions sit further away in the flow.

Study design rendering

When your study's rendering mode is set to Progressive, the system automatically inserts page breaks between certain content to match how responses are revealed to researchers.

To change this: Go to Study > Design > Rendering and update the rendering mode. Switching away from Progressive will unlock the affected breaks.

Welcome page

The welcome page always ends with a locked page break. Your first question always begins on a new screen, keeping the study intro separate from your questions.

This behavior is fixed and cannot be changed.

Groups with skip logic

When a group has skip logic applied, the entire group is pinned to its own page. The logic needs to evaluate all of the group's responses together before routing the participant. Splitting the group across pages would prevent this from working correctly.

⚠️ Groups without skip logic also render on a single page, but their breaks are not locked. They reflect the group's natural boundary and move with the group as you reorder content.

To unlock the break: Remove the skip logic from the group. Logic rules can be edited from the Logic flow tab in the editor.

A few things to keep in mind

Reordering content near a locked break doesn't unlock it. The lock is tied to the content type, not its position in the editor.
Locked breaks cannot be deleted. There is no × button on them, and the tooltip will explain the reason if you are unsure why a break is locked.
Page numbers update in real time in the editor toolbar, so you can always see how many pages your survey has as you build it.