1. Qualtrics
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Data

Security

Qualtrics passed both phases of Queen’s Security Privacy Risk Assessment (SPRA), evaluated by ITServices. Data collected by Queen's University will be stored in a data center in Toronto, Canada and backup data is stored in Montreal, Canada.

See Qualtrics Security Statement for further details on their security standards.

The Qualtrics head office is in Utah, however they also have Canadian operations.

There are a number of security options available to you to decrease the likelihood of fraud, found under the Survey/Survey Options section of your project. This is of particular importance if you are offering incentives.

See Security Survey Options (qualtrics.com)

In particular, note their warning: "We recommend you take extra care when setting up surveys that involve incentives (e.g., with the Tango Card extension, setting up an anonymous raffle, or setting up your own incentive survey). Using the correct settings and configuration is essential to ensure that the incentives are restricted to your intended respondents. Without appropriate settings, it may be possible for people to take advantage of your survey distributions and claim the incentives. Please carefully review the settings you can use to protect your survey below."

Privacy

There are two ways to do this:

  • Option 1: Distribute your survey with an anonymous link. The anonymous link is a generic link that can be sent via your own email and can be forwarded by anyone or posted to a website. There is no way to tell who completed your survey or if they completed it multiple times.
  • Option 2: If you want to send your survey to a specific group of contacts, yet still are required to be completely anonymous, use the Qualtrics Emailer to send your survey. This will allow you to track the responses, and send selective reminders. However, as the default for this option is that user names and emails will be stored with your results, you must turn this off in Survey Options to ensure that the responses are anonymous. You will find this option under Survey Termination/Anonymize Responses. No personal data or IP addresses will be recorded.

For further information on using anonymous links, see the Qualtrics Anonymous Link support page.

If you export or download your data into CSV, TSV etc., the data are not automatically deleted from the account or servers. The data will remain on your account indefinitely for future analysis or manipulation.

If you delete the data from your account after exporting, the data will remain on the Qualtrics servers for a 90 day period where they could be recovered if you reach out to Qualtrics Support. After the 90 day period, the data are permanently deleted from Qualtrics servers.

For further information, see the Qualtrics Support page on data deletion.

 Also see Qualtrics Support information on data export formats.

Migration

You can combine responses from two identical surveys, re-upload edited data, or bring in your own data. Follow the steps at www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/data-and-analysis-module/data/import-responses/.

You can combine response data from two identical surveys. Here are the steps: www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/data-and-analysis-module/data/combining-responses/.