All Collections
Community
Collecting a Participant's Personal Identifiable Information (PII)
Collecting a Participant's Personal Identifiable Information (PII)

Can I collect participants personal information?

Justin L avatar
Written by Justin L
Updated over a week ago

At Respondent, we take the protection of user data, privacy, and security very seriously. Respondent does not provide researchers with any participant contact information or Personal Identifiable Information (PII).

As of October 2022, we now offer Researchers the option to ask Participants to opt in and share their personal email addresses for a limited amount of time.

To learn more about our new email visibility feature, click here >>> email address.

If you request or send email addresses in either the screener or via the message center in a project, we automatically redact this information.


With the exception of a few research study methodologies, collecting any participant's PII, including but not limited to a phone number, physical address, social security number, financial information, account numbers, birth date, etc is prohibited on Respondent.

We know that you want to get the best data and collect all the information relative to your research project, however, if Respondent discovers you're collecting any PII you will be removed from the platform per Respondent’s Terms and Conditions.


Screener Surveys & Project Invitations

Asking Participants to provide any PII before taking a Screener survey, or before being invited to participate in your research project is strictly prohibited

Do not embed a request for PII in an outbound link in a Screener Question or in the Project Details. Any connection that makes the Participant leave the Respondent platform while applying for a Screener or in the Invitation to join a research project, and takes them to a fillable Google document, or a link connecting them to WhatsApp, TikTok, or any other app or website is grounds for your research project(s) to be paused and may include account deactivation.

If you have any questions about creating a screener, or what information you can and cannot request from a Participant, please contact our Customer Success Team at support@respondent.io before launching your research project or sending invitations.


Messages

If you need to contact a Participant, you can contact them via messages, inside your project dashboard. Participants are notified via email and text message when you send them a message.

Reasons you would contact a Participant include:

  • Clarify an answer to a screener question.

  • Confirm some details about a scheduled meeting.

  • Provide any homework or an NDA prior to starting a project.


Phone Screening

Only with documented consent, within the messages center of the project, can you ask a Participant for a phone number to organize any additional phone screenings for clarity or context. This should take place before any official invitations to participate.

Read more about Phone Screening here.

Did this answer your question?