Collect Personal Data in Anonymous Surveys (Pseudonymization)

Pseudonymization allows you to collect personal information (such as names as email addresses) whilst ensuring that responses to other questions remain anonymous. This is the perfect feature for those that need to track survey responses or update personal data on record, but want to encourage honest responses.

How does Pseudonymization work?

When creating a survey, you can mark questions that collect personal data. Then when you collect responses, the answers to those questions are stored separately to all other question data. The order of responses is randomized, and it's not possible to link the personal data back to the response data.

We also recommend setting a Minimum Response Quota via the survey settings.

This locks access to your results until a minimum response threshold is met. This is important as it means you can't identify your first responders by the fact there is no one else that could have submitted that response.

Let's get into how to set up Pseudonymization in your surveys.

Step 1: Enable Pseudonymization

1. Go the the Build section of your survey
2. Click the ghost icon in the left sidebar labelled ‘GDPR’
3. Enable Pseudonymization

Step 2: Mark questions that collect personal data

1. Click a question in your survey to reveal the question settings bar
2. Enable the switch beneath "Personal Info"

Step 3: Set a minimum response quota

1. Click 'GDPR' in the left sidebar
2. Click the 'Minimum Responses' dropdown
3. Select a number from the list

For the integrity of anonymization, you must select a minimum required response count. Once you’ve done this, it will not be possible to collect your responses until the minimum quota has been met.

Using email tracking with pseudonymization

When using Pseudonymization with tracking, the tracked data will be linked to the PII response data only. I.e. the tracking information will not be linked to other response data.

Read more about tracking.

Viewing pseudonymized response data

When viewing your results, the anonymous information will be available in the same report as the tracked personal information, but stored separately.

To view the separated anonymous and PII data, switch to the ‘Individual Responses’ section of your report. From here, you’ll be able to switch between the list of PII and the anonymized responses using the tabs at the top of the page.

You will notice that the time, date, referrer, location, and any tracking data is not available when viewing anonymized information.

Exporting PII and anonymized data

Separate spreadsheets for PII and ‘anonymous data’ can be downloaded from the exports section of the sidebar.