Survey attributes

Background

You can use survey attributes to collect or validate demographic data, by enabling employees to select from a list of fixed values at the start of their survey, automatically updating their employee record.

As soon as segments from survey attributes meet your organization's visibility requirements, their dashboards display data in the same way as all other segments.

If you're additionally targeting questions to segments from the survey attribute, employees can receive those questions in the same survey, after self-selecting an option.

If your survey attributes are sensitive, we recommend using the consent requirement setting with an explanation of why you're asking for this data and how you'll use it. This setting also restricts the attributes to ensure that the data is only available to user groups with access to restricted attributes. Administrators can manage user group access to restricted attributes in Access Control.

The kiosk mode doesn't support sensitive survey attributes (this can be changed on request), and any employee type survey attributes (Example: Manager, Human Resources Partner), for security reasons.

Benefits

Organizations can benefit from survey attributes by collecting segmentation data that they don't already have in their Human Resources system. Example: Commute type, Working preference (office vs. remote), or sensitive (consent requiring) attributes such as Ethnicity or Gender identity. 

This can provide even more granular analysis and identify areas of improvement. You could use a survey attribute to create intersecting segments by combining it with an already existing attribute, or another survey attribute (see Using combination attributes for additional access).

Use case examples

• You collect Ethnicity data using consent requiring survey attributes, and combine it with your existing Country attribute after the survey. The segments from the Ethnicity x Country attribute can help you to observe how driver scores differ in an intersectional way. Because the Ethnicity attribute would be restricted, the resulting combination attribute would also be restricted.
• You can collect Working preferences to understand how the Peer Relationships and Management Support driver scores may vary for employees that prefer to work from the office versus home.

Survey participant experience

Survey attributes display at the beginning of every survey as long as the editable attribute is still active within the survey schedule.

If you marked the attribute as Mandatory, employees can't proceed to the survey without selecting an option from the survey attribute. See Consent notice for sensitive survey attributes to understand how this differs for sensitive survey attributes.

Alternatively, an employee can select and submit an option from the survey attribute, without choosing to complete the survey. Their selection is still valid, even if they didn't answer any of the regular survey questions. The participation rate on the dashboard of their selected segment will include this employee in the total number only.

If you keep the same survey attribute(s) across multiple survey rounds, employees that have already self-selected a segment on a previous survey will see their previous selection when they open the survey. This enables employees to change their selection as long as you continue collecting data from the same survey attributes.