Hi,
Joffm will probably be more clever
Oh, no, I'm not.
But some remarks.
In your screenshot the question is mandatory.
You know, this way you can't set it to "mandatory"; some cells are not answered.
But the validation Tony showed forces that each row id answered.
Two more proposals to make it a bit less confusing for the respondent.
1. First ask which sub themes were covered, then ask only about these. Use array filter.
Now the question can be mandatory, because column 3 can not be NONE.
2. And a second way:
Use an array(text) with inserted drop-downs.
This way you can display better scales than to have to explain them in the header.
Make columns 1, 2 and 4 depended on column 3.
If column 3 is NONE the other columns are set to empty and disabled.
But again this question can't be mandatory. But you know that column 3 has to be answered.
So it is suficient to validate that column3 is answered for all sub themes, like count(self.sq_X003)=

(number of sub themes)
By the way
The posts of this forum provided an equation to enter in the "equation question". Where is that specified? I browsed the various question facets (general settings, logic, display, etc.) and I could not find it.
An "equation question" is a question of type "equation".
But in this case I am sure that there was the mention of a "question validation equation".
This you find in the settings "Logic"
Now it's up to you to decide what to do.
If there are further questions, please provide a lss export of this aprt of the survey.
And I wonder why you ignored and removed the questions that appeared when you started this thread.
Joffm