Anonymous and De-Identified Surveys & Forms
When configuring a form in ChartHop, you can select from 3 anonymity options the survey:
- Identified - Linked to a person and their demographic information
- The identity can be hidden from certain peple using the "Who can see the identity of the respondent?" settting.
- De-Identified - Hide identity, but allow certain specific demographic information and limit reporting to be stored on the form response.
- Anonymous - Not linked to any personally identifiable information
De-identified forms are the most common type that is used in surveys. They give an individual who completes the survey anonymity while allow the administrators to do analysis at a group level in order to identify trends within demographic groups.
- Go to Admin > General
- Scroll to De-identified forms
To set the recorded demographic field that you would like to collect within your de-identified surveys:
- Add and remove fields from the list of Recorded Fields
- These changes will only effect future form responses. If you would like them applied to previous form responses, please contact ChartHop.
- Click the Save settings button.
By default the felds are:
You are able to add any Single Select, Multi-Select or Smart Bucket field as additional fields.
Fields that contain clearly identifiable information like name, email or other is explicitly not allowed to be added to de-identified surveys.
The demographic data will be recorded on the date of the form submission. This way if the historical data changes, then form results will not change.
If you are having issues with the demographic data not aligning to your expectations, please contact ChartHop support.
In order to protect anonymity, ChartHop will categorize demographics that fall below our limit as "Other."
For example, if we are grouping by Department with a limit of 5, the results:
- 10 Responses from Engineering ➡️ Displays as "Engineering"
- 10 Responses from Sales ➡️ Displays as "Sales"
- 5 Responses from Support ➡️ Displays as "Support"
- 4 Responses from Marketing ➡️ Displays as "Other"
- 2 Responses from Operations ➡️ Displays as "Other"
The default minimum sample size is 5 responses. The minimum allowed is 3 responses.
To set your minimum sample size:
- Go to Admin > General
- Scroll to Anonymous
- Set the minimum sample size
- Click the Save settings button.
To view your results by the demographic fields:
- Go to the Form or Survey where you want to view results
- Go to Responses > Summary
- Use the Group by dropdown to select a field to group and analyze the results by
If a demographic group does not reach the minimum group size, then they will be grouped with all of the other demographic groups that have not met the minimum group size as "Other." See the example above.
In order to preserve anonymity, if the "Other" grouping only consists of a single group below the minimum group size then it is combined with another identified group in order to avoid the ability to infer identity.
For example, insted of presenting the responses as:
- 25 Male
- 35 Female
- 2 Other
Where it would be easy to infer that the "Other" is Non-Binary. The "Other" results will be grouped with a named group in order to not isolate those responses:
- 27 Male + Other
- 35 Female
As the owner of a survey, you are able to export form responses. For a de-identified survey, this export will include demographic information with the minimum sample size limits applied across the entire dataset.
To export form responeses:
- Go to the Form or Survey where you want to view results
- Go to Responses > Summary
- Click the download button, then download the CSV.
Anonymous forms allow users to submit a form and have the response recorded without any ability to link it back to them. This ensures complete anonymity for the submitter.
To setup an anonymous form:
- Go to the Form > Settings
- Access & Anonymity — "How should the identity of the respondent be recorded and displayed?"
- Select Anonymous
You will be able to view the responses to an anonymous form within the form, survey or review, but that is the only location.
