I'm fairly new to Qualtrics, but was asked a question about confidentiality by a victims advocate/violence prevention advocate that heard from a "...colleague in a similar role at another university that their area utilizes Qualtrics for intake and case management purposes and that it’s confidential in that only folks with the credentials to access their Qualtrics accounts are confidential advocates."
So, I'm wondering if that's possible...for surveys and things to be completely confidential.
Thank you for any assistance.
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Confidentiality of Qualtrics Surveys
Best answer by wpm24
You have to aspects of confidentiality here, 1) what type of information Qualtrics stores regarding the person and 2) who can access said information. Qualtrics is only responsible for the 1st point. Restricting access to the data falls to the user who collects the data, to protect it using a clear data management procedure. Like your colleague says, those with the login credentials can see the data. So it is your job to assure only the correct people can access the data.
What Qualtrics can do is anonymize responses. This is a two step process.
- make sure when you distribute the survey for people to take, use only an anonymous link. This is done by selecting a) distributions b)anonymous link.
- Turn on "anonymize response". This prevents qualtrics from collecting geographic data of the respondent based on IP address. It does not interfere with any of the data collection (see image below)
Very importantly, if you ask a client or put a client's name in the qualtrics survey using a question, then it is no longer anonymous. So you will need to have another way to link a qualtrics survey to them without their name. Researchers usually do this using a Master list - where a name is paired with a number. This number is then used as the 'name' of the person when doing the survey. The list with the name/number combo is stored separately from all data.
So to sum up, yes qualtrics can make things confidential, but there is still standard steps you need to follow on your end to keep it that way.
Hope this helps!
+8You have to aspects of confidentiality here, 1) what type of information Qualtrics stores regarding the person and 2) who can access said information. Qualtrics is only responsible for the 1st point. Restricting access to the data falls to the user who collects the data, to protect it using a clear data management procedure. Like your colleague says, those with the login credentials can see the data. So it is your job to assure only the correct people can access the data.
What Qualtrics can do is anonymize responses. This is a two step process.
- make sure when you distribute the survey for people to take, use only an anonymous link. This is done by selecting a) distributions b)anonymous link.
- Turn on "anonymize response". This prevents qualtrics from collecting geographic data of the respondent based on IP address. It does not interfere with any of the data collection (see image below)
Very importantly, if you ask a client or put a client's name in the qualtrics survey using a question, then it is no longer anonymous. So you will need to have another way to link a qualtrics survey to them without their name. Researchers usually do this using a Master list - where a name is paired with a number. This number is then used as the 'name' of the person when doing the survey. The list with the name/number combo is stored separately from all data.
So to sum up, yes qualtrics can make things confidential, but there is still standard steps you need to follow on your end to keep it that way.
Hope this helps!
+8Hi, wpm24 sums it up perfectly. I have a couple of videos on Anonymity in Qualtrics at https://researchguides.library.syr.edu/dataservices/Qualtrics that will explain the various options in greater detail.
+8Not sure if i got your question right. But you can use the anonymous link survey that none of the respondents will be identify. You won´t know who is the respondent, only their id´s.
Thank you -- I think we're trying to have user A build surveys and then we want to transfer those surveys to user B in the event user A leaves (which looks like it can be done by administrators).
However, I also think there's some concern about what brand administrators can see in the surveys...so, for example, they want to make sure that a brand administrator can't login and see who has filed a sexual harassment case and they want to make sure that the case files can be shared among those in that office.
+8In situations like these I reccomend that someone like the PI or director create the project and then give appropriate access to whoever needs it. This way, if someone needs to have their access revoked for whatever reason, it can be done much more quickly then contacting the brand admin. Also, since there is usually less turnover at that level (as opposed to grad assistants, etc), you won't need to transfer ownership as often.
https://community.qualtrics.com/XMcommunity/discussion/comment/45922#Comment_45922https://community.qualtrics.com/XMcommunity/discussion/comment/45940#Comment_45940Irrespective of who owns the project, the brand admin will ALWAYS have access the data and the surveys.
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