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The Respondent Cleaning feature allows you to permanently remove respondents from reporting based on predefined rules. The cleaning process is executed during data activation, meaning that all rules, including those using date conditions, are applied when your data batch is activated (or re-activated).
Cleaning rules are created using imported questions, allowing you to combine categorical and date variables to define which respondents and their responses should be removed. The rules are executed before any variables created within the project are generated. This is why only imported questions can be used in the setup.
Important: Once a rule is executed, respondents are permanently deleted from the project and cannot be restored.
1: Creating a Rule
To create a respondent cleaning rule, open the ADMINISTRATE area of Forsta Visualizations.
Open your project.
Select Variables from the left-side menu. Then open the Data Cleaning drop-down menu and select Respondent Cleaning.
Select Create Rule on the right side. The Create rule modal displays.
Enter a Name to the rule. Optionally, enter a Description. Then add the criteria for the filters. This will determine which respondents are permanently deleted. For example, to delete respondents older than six months and from the United States, add two filters: the first to identify respondents with a response date older than last six months, and the second where country equals United States.
To add additional criteria filters, select ADD. To remove additional criteria filters, select the trash can icon.
When you are finished adding filter criteria, select Save.
Create as many rules as you need to. When you are finished creating your rules, you will need to run the rules in order to remove the data.
2: Running the Rules
Important: Once a rule is executed, respondents are permanently deleted from the project and cannot be restored.
Open the ADMINISTRATE area of Forsta Visualizations, then select your project.
After you have created your rules, select Data Sources from the left-side menu. Then select Data Batches from the tab menu.
Select Apply Activations to apply the rules to the selected data batches.
Once the activations/inactivations are complete, you can view the Activation Log to confirm that the data was removed. Expand the content for the most recent activation log. The step Execution Of Respondent Cleaning Rules should display with the Status Succeeded.
A spreadsheet of deleted respondent IDs can be downloaded from either:
the Activation Log on the Data Batches tab
the Respondent Cleaning tab using the LOGS button
The spreadsheet has two tabs. The Rules tab identifies the rules that were processed. The Data tab lists the Activation Number, Batch ID, Respondent ID, Date, and Action taken on the respondents. If no respondents are listed in the downloaded spreadsheet, no respondents were deleted.