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About editing or deleting questions

Under some circumstances, data integrity complications can arise from editing and deleting questions. Prevent complications by considering the information here.

Selection never open for submissions​

If your selection has never been open for submissions, then editing or deleting questions will not cause data integrity problems.

  • There is no chance that any responses exist.

  • Question edits and deletions will not cause significant data integrity issues or data erasure.

Selection might have submissions​

If your selection has ever been open for submissions, then there is a possibility that responses exist to the question you are editing or deleting.

To protect author privacy, selectors are unable to determine whether draft submissions and responses are under development by authors. You have no way to tell whether draft submissions have been saved by authors.

While it is possible to edit existing questions, it is not recommended.

  • Any changes you make will be applied when responses are created or adjusted.

  • Existing responses will be unaffected.

danger

Question edits can cause unpredictable outcomes and data integrity issues.

For example, if you change a question type from date to number, then any saved date responses will remain, and may be submitted, even though they are not valid responses for the new question type.

Deleting a question also deletes its responses​

caution

If you delete an existing question, then any the responses to the question will also be deleted.

It is not possible to restore the deleted responses, so think carefully before deleting questions on opened selection processes.

Fairness risks​

Respondents to your selection may regard unannounced question edits or deletions as being improper, unfair or unlawful depending on the circumstances.

caution

Unannounced changes to questions may lead to complaints.

Topics: P310