Delete Panelists

Delete Panelists

Overview

When a panelist is no longer needed in the Panelists library, you can delete their record. Panelist deletion can only take place from the Panelists library, one panelist at a time.

Once deleted, panelists will no longer be available to you in the list of active panelists. However, their records will still exist on our servers, and their results will remain unaffected inside your tests.

If you ever need to reactivate deleted panelists, please contact our Support Team for assistance.


Deleted panelist records can also be permanently deleted (or scrubbed) from our servers. You can find out more about this service further down in this workflow.

Before you follow the steps in this workflow, consider whether pausing a panelist might be a more suitable action at this time.


Delete Individual Panelists

  1. From the black ribbon at the top, select Libraries > Panelists.

  2. Search for the panelist within a panel or across panels.

  3. Click on the panelist's Username to open their Panelist card.

  4. In the Profile tab, on the right, under the Status dropdown list, select Delete.

    You will be prompted with a dialog box asking for the confirmation for your action.

  5. Click Delete panelist.

    The Panelist card will immediately be closed from your view and their record will be deleted. If you try to search for the panelist that you just deleted, they will not come up in the search results. However, their results will remain in every test that they participated in.

Panelist records that get deleted by following the steps above are not permanently deleted. Although you cannot search for deleted panelists, their records will still exist on our servers and if necessary we can reactivate them for you. Contact our Support Team for assistance.

Permanently Scrub Sensitive Panelist Data

In contrast to reactivating deleted panelists, you can also request from us to scrub (permanently delete) 'sensitive data' related to deleted panelists.

Let's explore what 'sensitive data' is and why you would want to scrub it:
  1. Fields in the Panelists library can be set up as sensitive. Panelist name, email, gender, etc, are good examples of panelist fields that would qualify as sensitive.

    You can request from our Support Team to mark some or all panelist fields as sensitive, or not to mark any of them as sensitive. Even if we make the change to the fields after there are panelist records in your Panelists library, the existing panelist records will be updated (flagged or un-flagged as sensitive) accordingly.

  2. Some questions and attributes can be marked as Sensitive data during the test setup. You will find this option in the Question options or Attribute options of the compatible questions and attributes.

    Data collected into such questions and attributes will be flagged as 'sensitive' in the database. Even if you change the option in a question or attribute after the data is collected, the data already collected prior to you making the change will be updated (flagged or un-flagged as sensitive) accordingly.

Your Legal Department, for example, may request from you to permanently delete sensitive panelist information. If they identify for you what type of information is considered sensitive, then you can mark the appropriate fields and questions as such. They can also specify to you how frequently they would want you to scrub sensitive panelist data.

There are two ways to scrub sensitive information related to deleted panelists:
  1. One-time request that take place on a specific date and time. This is useful if you need to perform the scrubbing only once.

  2. Scheduled scrubbing that automatically takes place periodically, such as once every quarter, once a year, etc.

    If you are dealing with a large consumer panel where consumers get deleted or unsubscribe themselves fairly frequently, it may be useful to schedule automatically data scrubbing.

The way automatic data scrubbing works is that after a panelist has been in a deleted state for X number of days, our system will then scrub from our database all information related to that panelist that is marked as 'sensitive'. Our system will check once every Y number of days for panelists who have been deleted for more than X number of days and initiate the scrubbing process.

For example, our system can be set up to check every 100 days for panelist records that have been in a deleted state for 90 or more days.

Should you choose to go with this option, please tell us what you would like the following values to be:
  1. Value for the X  (in days).
  2. Value for the Y (in days).

Whether you wish to implement a one-time or an automatic scrubbing of sensitive information related to deleted panelists, please contact our Support Team to initiate the process.

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