# Showing only 3 out of 5 alternatives

**URL:** <https://forum.surveyengine.com/t/showing-only-3-out-of-5-alternatives/443>\
**Category:** Experiments\
**Tags:** formatting\
**Created:** [12 June 2026 12:48 UTC](https://forum.surveyengine.com/t/showing-only-3-out-of-5-alternatives/443 "2026-06-12T12:48:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![fhibk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@fhibk](https://forum.surveyengine.com/u/fhibk)\
**Post date:** [12 June 2026 12:48 UTC](https://forum.surveyengine.com/t/showing-only-3-out-of-5-alternatives/443/1 "2026-06-12T12:48:46Z")

</div>

Hello!

I have a set of 5 alternatives, but to reduce complexity and to make it work on a smartphone, I only want 3 out of those 5 to be shown (the ones, that should be shown changes between choice sets e.g. 1,2,5; 1,3,4 etc.)

I have done the experiment design in ngene and have prepared for this: in every choice set, I have 2 alternatives with price “9999” also indicating there irrelevance.

What’s missing, is a way, to hide those two (changing) collumns - based on there value.

Is there a way to do this? (the easier and robuster, the better)

Thanks a lot!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![benno](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.surveyengine.com/benno/32/3_2.png) [@benno](https://forum.surveyengine.com/u/benno)\
**Post date:** [22 June 2026 09:34 UTC](https://forum.surveyengine.com/t/showing-only-3-out-of-5-alternatives/443/2 "2026-06-22T09:34:42Z")

</div>

What is required is an availability design, then use that to drive display.  
The method above is a bit of a hack, and would work but would be very brittle.  
So here´s the workflow.

1. Generate an experiment that contains an ávailability attribute. Use consistent labels like ´shown´, ´hidden´etc
2. Then you´ll need to generate the design - there are papers on this, but essentially you will need to control for balance and ensure you remove co-linearity which may be introduced by removing certain alternatives. Upload once happy with it.\>
3. Then you´ll need some javascript to hide an alternative column if the cell has ´hidden´in it - this, probably also to hide the ávailability´´ attribute. This is pretty simple to do using chat gpt.