How to add and remove demographics from a survey
You can select which demographics to include in Step 4 when creating your survey. If things change, you can go back and edit them later on.
Add demographics to a survey
To add demographics to your survey:
- Select the radio button to the left of a demographic.
- Set it as Self-select or Invisible.
You can bulk add all demographics to your survey by selecting Select all categories.
💡What's the difference between self-select and invisible demographics?
Invisible: Participants don't need to provide their demographic information when taking the survey, because it is already in your participant library.
Self-Select: Participants need to provide their demographic information when taking the survey. They will need to select their answer from the available demographic options.
Remove demographics from a survey
To remove a demographic from your survey, deselect the radio button to the left.
You can bulk remove demographics from your survey by selecting Deselect all categories.
💡Removing demographics from an active or closed survey? This will delete all demographic data captured by the survey, and you will no longer be able to filter results by demographics.
Will removing demographics from my survey delete data in the participant library?
No, your participant library is protected. Any existing information you have in the library will still be there.
Example:
An HR team is running a survey with participants from their library. It includes five demographics.
After being told that demographic reporting isn’t needed, they remove all demographics from the survey.
The next day, the CEO changes their mind and requests demographic reporting. The HR team reselects the five demographics. Because the data exists in the participant library, the demographic information is restored.
Will removing self-select demographics delete demographic data captured by the survey?
Yes. If you remove self-select demographics from an active or closed survey and then need to re-add them, there is no way to retrieve the data.
Example:
A research team at a local council is running a survey to gather community feedback. It includes five self-select demographics.
After being told that demographic reporting isn’t needed, they removed all demographics from the survey.
The next day, the CEO changes their mind and requests demographic reporting. The research team reselects the five demographics. However, as all participants were anonymous (not in their library), there is no way to recover the demographic data. They can only collect it for future responses.
What happens if I remove demographics from an old survey?
You can remove demographics from a closed survey, recent or old. You just won't be able to filter results by demographic, which can limit the depth of insights you can extract.
However, there is one thing to keep in mind if you remove demographics from an old survey and then need to re-add them: Demographic data will be restored from your current participant library.
If there were significant demographic changes between the time your survey closed and the point you re-added the demographics, this could affect any reanalysis you're doing.
Example:
An HR team ran a survey last year with participants from their library. That survey included five demographics.
After being told that demographic reporting wasn't needed, they removed all demographics from the survey.
Six months later, their CEO tells them that they actually do need to report by demographics for that survey. The HR team reselects the five demographics they removed.
However, there was restructuring after the survey ran, changing the organisation's demographics. This means that the demographics restored via the participant library aren't the same as those at the point the survey was run. Any reanalysis based on new demographics could be skewed or incorrect.