Projects with confidential responses
Receiving an ample quantity of honest feedback is often one of the goals of an evaluation project. Confidentiality settings are one of the many features available in Blue that may improve response rates. By protecting the identity of raters, participants will feel more comfortable providing honest feedback.
Blue offers 3 levels of rater confidentiality
Confidential project
Use this level of rater confidentiality if project managers and administrators should not be able to complete evaluations on behalf of raters, nor view their responses. Rater IDs are encrypted, and names and emails are displayed as not available (N/A) for exported response data.
This level of rater confidentiality differs from the confidential project with anonymization in that the raters’ names are visible on the Management – Task screen.
Confidential project with anonymization
Use this level of rater confidentiality if project managers and administrators should not be able to view rater names, complete evaluations on their behalf, nor view their responses. Rater IDs are encrypted, and names and emails are displayed as not available (N/A) in exported response data.
This higher level of confidentiality conforms to regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) used in the European Union to protect individuals’ privacy.
Non-confidential project
Use this level of rater confidentiality if your project managers and administrators should be able to view the rater names, complete evaluations on their behalf, and view their responses. Raters’ names, IDs, and emails will be visible in exported response data.
To protect the raters’ identity in reports and dashboards, thresholds can be set at the report, subject, report block, and question levels to prevent report viewers from accidentally discovering the identity of raters based on the demographic fields used.
An alternative to creating a confidential project could be to ask a department or group not involved in the project to manage the evaluation, such as your human resources department or a private consultant.
Rater confidentiality in project administration
The following section describes how the confidentiality of the rater is maintained employing different methods depending on the type of project being developed.
Project feature comparison chart
This chart displays how applying confidentiality will affect a project.:
Rater confidentiality in projects
| Access | Confidential project | Confidential project with anonymization | Non-confidential project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demographics | |||
| Add demographic fields after project is published. | Yes1 | Yes1 | Yes |
| Encryption | |||
| Rater IDs encrypted in exported responses files | Yes | Yes2 | No |
| Rater IDs encrypted in exported analytics files | Yes | Yes | No |
| Task management | |||
| View rater names | Yes | No | Yes |
| View rater responses | No | No | Yes |
| Complete fillout on behalf of raters | No | No | Yes |
| Send individual reminders | Yes | No3 | Yes |
| Edit group tasks | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Rater management | |||
| Manually add or remove raters in the datasource after the project is published | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatically add or remove raters in the datasource after the project is published | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Confidential projects
Footnotes
- If demographic field(s) are added after any evaluations have been submitted, the demographic data will not be included for those responses. To avoid this, add the demographic fields immediately after publishing the project. ↩ ↩2
- In a confidential project with anonymization, the rater ID is encrypted and cannot be unencrypted as is possible in a confidential project. The level of confidentiality should be considered when a rater ID is needed to export data into a data warehouse, data lake or other system for further analysis. ↩
- In a confidential project with anonymization, the rater ID is not visible, so a project manager could send a manual reminder to an individual who has not completed their survey (but they won’t actually know who the email is being sent to). ↩
Rater confidentiality in reports
By default, rater names are never visible in reports. There are only a few reporting features that can be manually set to display rater names such as certain report blocks (see the table below), however these features require the report creator (administrator or project manager) to activate this option. This conscious selection of the feature prevents accidental display of rater names.
Rater name availability to report viewer
| Report block / type | Confidential project | Confidential project with anonymization | Non-confidential project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comment report block | No | No | Yes (if configured) |
| Response sheet report block | No | No | Yes (if configured) |
| Report - Publishing properties - Export responses | No | No | Yes |
In confidential and confidential anonymized projects, the rater IDs are encrypted, and rater names are not available in the project, which ensures that rater names do not appear in reports even if the report creator selected these demographic fields.
Thresholds set for the report, subjects, report blocks, and questions prevent report viewers from accidentally discovering the identity of raters based on the demographic fields used.
Rater confidentiality in dashboards
Rater names are never visible in dashboards.
In confidential and confidential anonymized projects, the rater IDs are encrypted, and rater names are not available, which ensures that rater names do not appear in dashboards even if the dashboard administrator has selected these demographic fields.
Minimum demographic thresholds can be configured to ensure that individual raters cannot be identified by their associated demographics in aggregate content drill downs. A demographic group excluded from the content drill downs is still included in the overall aggregate data.
Paper projects used for confidential and confidential anonymized projects, where no rater information is collected, are not supported in dashboards.
InManage data
InAdd a question report block
InReport blocks
InManage data
InManage data