Missing Survey Responses: Assistance Needed to Recover Data"

Question

Hello,

I conducted the survey and had reached 129 participants by last week. However, when I checked the results now, I only see 55 responses available. I haven’t deleted any data, so I’m not sure how this could have happened. also the expired time is set by November 2024.

Could you please assist me in recovering or regathering the missing responses? I'm so stressed and confused.

Thank you for your help!

Best regards

Answer 1

Please follow these steps to check where the difference in the numbers comes from: Problem Solutions for Data Retrieval

had reached 129 participants by last week

If you cannot clarify the issue, please explain what this number is based on.

Comments

I checked all steps and everything is fine but still I can see only 55 answers which are based on questionnaire (all) !!! I also have a screenshot taken on 19.08.2024 that shows the answers were 100 and i can send here. is there any possibility to ask expert to go to my profile and fix the problem?

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Please send the older screenshot and the current screenshot to info@soscisurvey.de, and please also include the URL of the questionnaire in the email. Also add the information when you started with data collection, please.

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Thank you very much for your prompt reply.
all needed information has been sent to the mention email address.

looking forward to hearing your feedback.

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Thanks for sending the details.

Please check the settings in "Collected Data" -> "Delete collected data" -> "Data Deletion on Schedule".

As far as I see in the database, you have configured not only one, but three (!) tasks to regularly delete records. One of them says to delete the data automatically after 1 month. That explains why the data from 11./12.8. is missing. That was older than one month.

The feature is intended for privacy compliance. SoSci Survey explicitly asks if you're sure, you want to configure an automated deletion. You pressed a very red button to confirm, so SoSci Survey simply did what you asked it for.

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oh noooo!!!! but I clearly remember that i did not set any rules! anyways thank you very much for the information and kind support. could you please delete all rules regarding deleting of the data in the future from my profile? because I can see now again the data has been decreased from 55 to 51 :((((. please help me, the data is very important for me.

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> could you please delete all rules regarding deleting of the data in the future from my profile?

Please do that by yourself. You can simply delete the schedules that you have creates. We do not change your settings, unless there is not other way.

>  I clearly remember that i did not set any rules

If you did not grant anyone else access to your project in the meantime, there is nobody else who could have done that. Possibly, you clicked thw wrong buttons when you deleted your testing data before starting the survey?

> the data is very important for me

We should be able to restore the data after your data collection has been finished, however, that is not for free: https://www.soscisurvey.de/help/doku.php/en:results:restoredata

How long will you continue to collect data?

By the way: Please check if your questionnaire is working properly. When opening the questionnaire URL you sent me, on a smartphone, you cannot see the dropdowns. Please make sure to select the "dynamic" display mode for these questions, if there may be respondents using smartphones.

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Thank you very much for your kind reply.  I already finished the data collection and intended to download the data  to analyze that I noticed  they are deleted. 60 euro is a bit expensive for me as a student and I truly need the data for finishing my master thesis. As I understood, I can translate a chapter but I could not find the pages that needs to be translated.

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Please, kindly write me an email to info@soscisurvey.de regarding restoring the data, when you have finished data collection and downloaded the available data. I will then start with restoring the lost data, and will also find some chapters where the English version needs an update to keep up with the German version.

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Thanks for your assistance! I just have two quick questions:

1- Although my data collection process is complete now, after you restore the missing data,, will the survey link still be active and available for use? I may need to conduct the survey again to gather more responses for more accurate analyse after reviewing the 129 responses currently collected.

2- Since I need all 129 responses in a single excel file or SPSS file, is it possible to avoid downloading the available data (51 responses) now and instead download all of it together (including the restored data) into one file once the restoration is complete?

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Most likely, I will be able to restore the deleted data into the existing project. However, reintegration of data from backups is tricky. Make sure to download all data, so that nothing of the newer data is lost, should something go wrong. The questionnaire and its URL will be available after restoring the data.

In case that reintegration in the existing project should not work, you would have to merge the two downloaded datasets. I do not think that it will be possible, but ... better save than sorry.

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I downloaded 51 responses but please keep them in my profile and avoid to remove them because as I mentioned I need both groups of data (missing data + existing data) in a single file.

Kindly be informed that a formal request for restoring data has been sent to your email address. Thank you very much again.

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Good morning! could you please update me regarding the time when I can have the restored data? Thanks.

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I have started yesterday, but it will typically take 2-3 days to have everything back in place. As I said, it's a bit complicated.

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Thank you so much then I will wait for your next update.
have a nice day. :)