How to re-order the "other" option at a Limesurvey survey • Limesurvey Consulting

[Tested with Limesurvey v2.06LTS]
Several Limesurvey question types allow adding an option to enter a free text answer. This option can be enabled when editing a question (“Option ‘other’ -> Yes”).
By default Limesurvey always places that option at the very end of the list of answers and there is no feature to change the order of answer options.

To place the “other” option at the very beginning of the list of answers or at any other position one needs to use some custom JavaScript. We have developed such a snippet for you which is easy to adjust and allows you to easily add the code to your survey and adjust it as necessary.

Assuming your answer options are using answer codes “1”, “2”, … you can use the following code snippet to place the “other” option before the 6th answer option (“none of these”):

<script type='text/javascript'>
$(document).ready(function() {
/* Adjust these settings */
 var move_element="other";
 var place_before="6";
/* Please do NOT change the lines below */
var place_before="javatbd{SGQ}"+place_before;
var move_element="javatbd{SGQ}"+move_element;
$("#"+move_element).insertBefore("#"+place_before);
});
</script>

The best approach is to insert the code in source code mode of the integrated editor:

Using the survey preview you should now see something like this:

You can simply place the “other” option on top of the list by adjusting the code above as follows:

/* Adjust these settings */
 var move_element="other";
 var place_before="1";

You can find the used JavaScript (you need to switch to source code mode to see it) at the help texts of this demo survey: Limesurvey-re-order_other_option_demo_survey (use right-click -> “save link” to save LSS file!).

If you want to place a certain item of a randomized list of answer options to the end of the list, have a look at How to place a certain option at the end of a list with randomized answers at Limesurvey survey.

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