At the beginning of each round, two members of each family come up to the main podium and play a mini-round for control of the question called "Face-Off". The host announced how many answers are on the board (which are always in order based on popularity), and then read a survey question and the first player to buzz-in gets to answer. The player to give the number one answer or have his/her answer be higher than the other player's answer won control. In case of a tie (both answers with the same number of people who gave it) the player who answered first won control. If neither player gave an answer on the board, the players at the main podiums get a chance to answer for control.
For time reasons, during Louie Anderson's & (some of) Steve Harvey's tenure, if neither player's answer was on the board the question was thrown out, and a new one was played.
During Dawson's first version & the current version, the player that won the Face-Off has a decision to either let his/her family play the question or pass the question to their opponents.