Purging sensitive data

Some jurisdictions require a participant's personal data to be purged after a certain period of time. The Sensitive Data feature for verbatim and image questions can automatically overwrite personal data after a participant's status changes to purged.

When the Sensitive Data feature is enabled in the application, a new question property section named Sensitive data will appear in the following survey questions:

• Open End
• Numeric
• Date
• "Other-Specify" answers in Choice and Button questions

When a member becomes purged after a set number of days, the application permanently overwrites their data for the questions which have been flagged. The background task to purge sensitive data runs every four hours and checks for questions with either the Treat other/ specify text responses as sensitive data or Treat response data as sensitive data checkbox selected. If the checkbox is selected, data is permanently overwritten and cannot be restored. If a member does not qualify, their data will not be affected.

The Treat other/ specify text responses as sensitive data and Treat response data as sensitive data checkbox can be selected or deselected at anytime whether:

• The study has live responses or not.
• The status of the study is opened, closed, pending or archived.
• The study is published or unpublished.

Example: Sensitive Data question property
After the Sensitive Data feature is enabled, a new question property area named Sensitive Data will appear in the available question types. Note: Only Admins can select or clear Treat response data as sensitive data and Treat other/specify text responses as sensitive data.