Good afternoon.
For my master thesis, I want school teachers to answer my survey. In my country every school has a specific identification number, e.g. 48593745 or AX4586FG4.
I want to know which teachers come from the same school (so they should enter their school identification number) so that I can analyze their data together, as a package. Now, for data protection purposes and to make sure the respondents stay anonymous, I am not allowed to see their school identification number, because that could identify special individuals. E.g. if somebody states he is principal, and obviously every school only has one principal, and I see the school ID, then I could look up who exactly the response came from. Thus, I want qualtrics to generate another number, when the school ID is entered and replace it with the original school ID.
Everybody from the same school should be assigned the same generated number by qualtrics. At the same time, no teachers from different schools, are allowed to be assigned the same number.
E.g. let's say 2 people state they come from school with the ID 48593745; and 10 people state they come from school AX4586FG4; and 5 people state they come from school PBZGHJTFD.
Then I want qualtrics to do the following in my variable "school ID":
Instead of showing me 2 times the number 48593745, it should show me 2 times the number "1"
Instead of showing me 10 times the number AX4586FG4, it should show me 10 times the number "2"
Instead of showing me 5 times the number PBZGHJTFD, it should show me 5 times the number "3"
On the qualtrics support page on randomizing ID's, I only found how to randomnly assign every single individual with a random ID. But obviously that is not what I want. I want every GROUP/school to have the same ID.
If you know a way I would be thankful. Maybe there is a simple solution embedded into qualtrics already, and I just haven't found it yet. I don't have any coding knowlege, so if you have a suggestion that involves complicated coding, I'm afraid that wouldn't work for me.
Thank you and best wishes.
All people belonging to the same group should get the same computer generated ID
It appears that you are trying to achieve a one to one mapping, but just want to change the value of the identifier. How does let the response be anonymous?
Say you map abc to 1 and xyz to 2 and so one. Now instead of principal for abc, you'll see principal for 1, and because it's fixed, anyone could just reverse it.
If you're the only one with access to the data and survey, then just make the changes after you've downloaded the data set.
Hi,
thanks for answering.
No, I will not know which school identificatin number gets changed into which number. I am not the one to provide a change key.
And number 1, 2, 3 were just examples instead of 1 it could 245, and instead of 2 it could be 35. I really don't care if the school ID's are changed in any particular order.
My entire point is, that all school ID's that are the same get changed into the same something else, and I do not know what, and have no possibility of changing it back, because I do not know the key.
So I think basically I want qualtrics to do the following:
1) regcognize school ID
2) check if the same school ID has been entered before.
2a) If no: Asign random number.
2b) If yes: Assign the same number, that has already be assigned.
This would require qualtrics to keep a list of all the original inputs to consult whenever a new school ID is entered.
There is also another option:
The other option would be, that qualtrics uses a key I do not know of to translate the ID. E.g. every school ID entered could automatically be divded by 3, and then the 5th square root could be taken. That would also make sure that every same school ID would always end up at the same new ID, and there is no need for qualtrics to keep the original data. BUT, I do not know about this key. That is the whole point. I may not under any circumstances know about the original ID or the key to the ID at any point, so that I cannot reverse the created ID to the original.
What you are asking for will not be possible for the simple reason that everything that the survey does is either defined by you or totally random.
Even if you want Qualtrics to keep a record of key-value pairs, you'll need to enter them. If you want it to perform some transformation on the key, you'll have to define that. This is how any system works. Without someone knowing what the key-value pair is, its not possible.
You can get it done, but will need to take the help of others, probably your advisor or IRB or someone else. But someone will need to know the key-value pairs or the transformations.
Ah, alright thank you.
I was hoping there might be a button somewhere, that when you click on it, would generate a random key, that qualtrics would then use to encrypt my school ID's.
Thank you for responding to me.
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