In some situations a project or a recruiter will not allow for participants’ personally identifiable information (PII) to appear on the Recollective platform. This could be due to privacy concerns or situations where recruiters would prefer to handle participant onboarding externally. When this occurs, additional steps must be taken to ensure these participants are added and invited smoothly and successfully.
By default, participants are able to modify their standard account fields such as first and last name when they register their account to join the study. To ensure that they don’t update their account to include PII, the ability to modify these fields must be disabled.
In this article we will review:
Adding Participants without PII
Firstly, to add participants without personally identifiable information to a study, the required method is to use the Bulk Import with an Excel file that includes only the following standard fields:
External ID: Any unique value assigned to the users from an external system. This identifier must be unique across all Panelists and Admins.
Username: They must be unique across all Panelists and Admins and cannot contain spaces or use special characters (dashes and underscores are permitted).
Password: Assign a temporary password to each participant. Participants should be required to change it upon their first login.
Once you’ve uploaded the bulk import file and gotten to the Import Settings stage, ensure that only ‘Password must be changed upon first visit’ is enabled below the Account Settings header which is the default before clicking ‘Start Import’.
Inviting Participants without PII
As email addresses were not added to each account, participants must be invited externally from the platform. To achieve this, all that needs to be provided to them is the site URL, their username and their temporary password that was set when they were added. For example:
Go to the site URL: example.recollective.com
Username: New_York
Password: Recollective123! (you will be prompted to change this once you first login)
When participants log in for the first time, they will be prompted to change their temporary password. They can then use the username you provided and their new password for future logins.
Warning: When email addresses are not provided, participants will not receive any automated email notifications. Due to this, it is recommended that the recruiter or whomever is contacting the participants externally, send reminders to notify them of new Activities or if they are falling behind. That said, when participants are logged in, they will receive these as notifications (bell icon) at the top right of the study.
Modifying Account Field Settings to Not Include PII
By default participants are able to modify their account fields when they register their account to join the study or by going to their Account Settings. To ensure that they don’t update their account to include PII, for example, adding their first or last name, the ability to modify these fields must be disabled.
To achieve this, navigate to Site Administration > Settings > Account Settings and scroll down to the Account Fields header:
By default, participants will be able to modify their first name, last name, email address, username, password and have the option to upload a profile photo. For a study where no personally identifiable information (PII) should be available, disable all account fields displayed (First name, Last name, Email Address, Username, and Profile Photo).
Checking off the 'Customize fields available during account registration' box will present a second column of options, allowing you to customize which fields panelists can edit during Account Registration (i.e. initial login) vs. Account Updates (future visits to the site). If any fields are enabled, participants may add PII. For example, a participant might choose a username that includes their first and last name. Disabling all fields for both Account Registration and Account Updates is recommended to prevent participants from adding PII to their standard account fields.
Once you’ve followed these three steps, your study is ready for launch!
Keep in mind that these steps ensure that participants do not have personally identifiable information included in any standard account fields associated with their accounts but participants could still include this information when they respond to questions and exercises. To reduce the likelihood of this occurring, it is recommended to add a reminder on the homepage and throughout your Activities to not provide this information.
🗣️ Still have questions or want to leave feedback on how we can do better? Contact us at [email protected].