Configurable Privacy Settings (Classic, Anonymous, Confidential)

Data Analyst Role 

‘Anonymous’ privacy

Participant Response Export (Anonymous) 

Answer Coding

‘Classic’ privacy

‘Confidential’ privacy

Participant Response Export (Confidential) 

How do participants know which privacy setting is used in each engagement?

Organizations that want to have more control over how they work with the results of their engagements can choose the level of privacy and confidentiality at the engagement level. 

For accounts with the Engagement+ or Engagement360 package, your new draft engagement starts in a default privacy state called 'Anonymous'. There are two additional types of privacy settings available: ‘Classic’ and ‘Confidential’.

(If you don't have Engagement+ or Engagement360 package on your account, your default privacy state is 'Classic'). 

To change the privacy setting for your engagement from ‘Anonymous’ to either ‘Classic’ or ‘Confidential’, click on Settings (in the upper right-hand corner of your draft) and then select ‘Privacy’ from the left-hand menu. 

Important: Once you have launched your engagement, you cannot change the privacy setting.

The 'Anonymous' and 'Confidential' privacy settings allow organizations to dig deeper into their results by allowing a more detailed version of ‘Data Download’. However, because it is possible to infer (Anonymous) or know (Confidential) participants’ identities, we have restricted the ability to download the ‘Participant response export (with or without personally identifying information)’ to one specific role: the ‘data analyst’.

Data analyst role:

Room or account admins can assign the ‘data analyst’ role to any new or existing user in the Room.

With this role, the data analyst can access the Reports tab of the Results dashboard.

Your ThoughtExchange customer representative cannot, under any circumstances, access this role and, therefore, cannot access these more detailed data on your behalf.

If an engagement has ‘Anonymous’ privacy

Participant identifying information is not linked to the responses provided. If the data analyst chooses to download a full record of the data, they can see the responses to each question (associated with a unique identifier) for each participant, but not their name, email address, IP addresses, or any other information that could be used to identify the individual. Even if users are asked to log in with an email address to participate, it is not tied to their responses. 

An engagement leader might infer a participant’s identity based on their responses (if there is only one person working in HR and a participant selects that as their team, for example), but it is not explicitly provided.

The data analyst will see both the ‘data download’ option and ‘Participant response export (without personally identifying information)’.  It is the latter option they will need to select to download in order to receive all of the information possible with an ‘Anonymous’ engagement.

(Participant Response Export - without personally identifying information) 

For both Anonymous and Confidential engagements, working with participant responses includes the ability to: 

• Export survey questions with their assigned codes:

What are Assigned Codes? 

Answer coding automatically tags each survey response with assigned values, so you only need to set it up once—saving you time when analyzing results. With answer codes embedded in your export, there’s no need to remap responses manually in Excel, making it easier to jump right into data analysis.

When designing your survey, you can turn on Answer coding to assign specific codes to answer choices.

Here’s an example of how a school district might use Answer Coding:
 If you are running a survey across different schools and you want to standardize school names, you can set “Mariposa High School” to automatically tag as "MH," or assign a numerical code like “5” to replace “Grade 5.” This saves time by embedding consistent tags in your export, eliminating the need to manually adjust data in programs like Excel.

This way, when responses are exported, the district can quickly filter and analyze responses by school or grade to see trends. By using codes, the district can make data analysis faster and more efficient, enabling data-driven decisions across schools. Answer coding can be especially useful when survey responses are complex or varied, as it enables researchers to identify patterns in a consistent format and draw clear conclusions from the data collected.
 

• Split Multiple Choice Answers into Columns: Multiple choice answers are displayed in separate columns within the export for easier analysis and filtering.

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• Participation Language: The language in which participants completed the engagement

  

• FOR SURVEY ONLY (Not Exchanges)

  -  Participation timing data: 

  • Start time
  • Completion time

  • Participation duration (time taken to complete the survey)

     

   

If an engagement has ‘Classic’ privacy

Participant identifying information is not linked to the responses provided. In Exchanges, thoughts shared by a particular user are not connected to the ratings that user assigned. 

The ‘Data Download’ function allows leaders to generate an excel file containing raw, unconnected data from the engagement. Clicking the ‘Generate’ button produces a ZIP file that includes up to three spreadsheets (depending on the engagement type) containing:

• Exchange Data - Every thought in the Exchange, its average star rating, rank, moderation status, and a list of the themes that thought was included in.
• Participant Stats - A count and percentage breakdown of responses to the Survey Questions.
• Summary - The date the Exchange was launched, the date it was closed, the status of the Exchange, and a count of participants, thoughts and ratings.

If an engagement has ‘Confidential’ privacy

Participant identifying information is linked to the responses provided. Please note that Identifying information can be seen by the data analyst but not by other participants. Leaders may choose to use this setting for a number of reasons including a need to follow up with participants or a desire to track responses across groups that are not indicated by question responses.

(Participation Response Export - with personally identifying information)

For Confidential engagements, participant response exports provide you with information about:

• Participant contact information, allowing organizations to link responses back to specific participants 

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• FOR SURVEYS ONLY (Not Exchanges)

        - Participation timing data: 

• Start time
• Completion time
• Participation duration (time taken to complete the survey)

• This is notified to participants in the engagement's introduction message, ensuring transparency about how their information will be handled: 

   

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• Leaders who use the Contact Information feature to collect participant contact details can also find these contact details in the Participant Response export. 

  

  

How do participants know which privacy setting is used in each engagement?

The privacy message participants see (and are required to accept) upon first visiting an engagement varies depending on the privacy settings selected by the leader. Participants in an Anonymous engagements receive this message:

Participants in Confidential engagements receive this message:

Tip: If every engagement in the account you are using has the same privacy settings, you may want to create a Custom Compliance Message to communicate about them explicitly.

For a full description of how data is handled, review our Terms of Use.