Confidentiality and multiple group structures
This article is part of Effectory's resources on confidentiality. For more information about our commitment to the confidentiality of participants' answers and the measures we take to guarantee it, please refer to this article.
My Effectory offers the possibility of making use of multiple group structures. This is especially useful for organizations operating in matrix structures that require reporting results across various dimensions (such as functional, geographical, agile, etc).
Reporting the same survey results from multiple perspectives at once may endanger the confidentiality of survey participants if no fitting measures are taken. To maintain the highest level of confidentiality, we implement additional restrictions to the information we provide when reporting multiple structures. These can be categorized as follows:
- General confidentiality rules
- Inviting structure vs additional structures
- Answers to open-ended questions
Curious to find out more about multiple structures? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager to discover how this feature can benefit your employee listening strategy!
General confidentiality rules
Our standard criteria concerning the minimum group size and response rate apply, without exception, to all group structures created in My Effectory.
We only report group scores for groups with five or more participants, of which at least five have responded to the survey. Groups falling below these thresholds will not have their results reported separately.
The results dashboard will display limited insights for groups that fall short of the minimum response rate requirement but have at least three respondents.
Inviting structure vs additional structures
When creating a new survey, you are asked to select one group structure as the base to send out the survey invitations. This will be your survey's inviting structure, and only the standard confidentiality restrictions apply to it. Therefore, its results are always the most complete.
The availability of the same survey's results in more structures heavily depends on our confidentiality rules, which become stricter for each additional structure in use. Make sure to invite participants based on the structure whose results you want to have reported the most comprehensively!
How does this work? In additional structures, we hide the results of groups, which, when cross-checked, could expose individual participants' scores, endangering their confidentiality. As a consequence, the more structures are used in a survey, the higher the chance that group results will be hidden in additional structures.
Tip! Keep in mind that the smaller the groups are in your group structures, the higher the chances that results will be hidden due to confidentiality restrictions. Gain the most insights from your reporting by ensuring your group structures are not too fragmented!
Additionally, restrictions also apply to a number of reporting insights in relation to additional group structures. These are:
Answers to open-ended questions
Open-ended questions offer valuable qualitative insights. However, the responses they capture are far more traceable than quantitative scores. Recognizing the sensitivity of this qualitative data, we adopt a strict approach when reporting answers to open-ended questions, of which you can read more here.
In the context of multiple group structures, we apply one additional rule: Answers to open questions are only reported in the survey's inviting structure. On any other structures, open answers remain hidden. This approach eliminates the risk of individual traceability across various reporting structures.