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Online Survey System (Qualtrics): Acceptable Use
I. Acceptable Use
By logging in and using the University of Pittsburgh Survey tool (the “Services”) provided under license with Qualtrics, Inc., you agree to:
- Follow University of Pittsburgh Policy AO 10 Computer Access and Use.
- Protect the privacy and confidentiality of student, patient, faculty, staff, and/or other institutional information, as required by FERPA (privacy of student information), HIPAA (privacy of patient information), and all other applicable University policies, state and federal laws.
- Seek review of all research involving human subjects to ensure compliance with federal regulations and University of Pittsburgh polices by the Institutional Review Board or other appropriate University office prior to using the survey tool.
- Construct surveys that use PHI (Protected Health Information) or other sensitive information from survey participants in such a way as to ensure the subject cannot be identified by the data stored or used. This is called “de-identification” of survey data. Any survey containing PHI (Personal Health Information) must be fully de-identified.
Surveys, even when they may otherwise contain “de-identified” PHI, may never be used to collect and store the following information:
- Social Security Numbers (SSN)
- Payment Card Information (includes credit cards, bank cards, and other forms of payment)
- Financial account numbers
- Driver's License or State Identification Numbers
- Employer or Taxpayer Identification Numbers (EINs or TINs)
- Passport or national identification numbers
- Biometric data (including fingerprints or retinal scans)
- Usernames and Passwords
II. System Use
The Services are currently available to all faculty, staff, and students with a primary University Computer Account.
- The Services provide a survey creation and hosting environment in the “cloud.”
- Before you delete a survey, leave the University, and/or your account expires, please be sure to download your data to other media, such as a local hard drive, CD-ROM, and/or USB drives and turn it over to the University. All survey data is the property of the University.
- You are responsible for the content and integrity of your survey data and must ensure that you have all the rights and permissions needed to use that content in connection with the Services.
- You may not misuse the Services by interfering with its normal operation or attempting to access it using a method other than through the interfaces and instructions that we provide.
- You may not circumvent or attempt to circumvent any limitations that the Services impose on your account (such as by opening up a new account to conduct a survey that has been closed for a violation of these terms).
- You may not reverse engineer the Services or attempt to do so.
- You may not transmit any viruses, malware, or other types of malicious software, or links to such software, through the Services.
- You may not use the Services to infringe the intellectual property rights of others, or to commit an unlawful activity.
- You may not resell or lease the Services.
III. Privacy Statement
The University of Pittsburgh respects the legitimate interests of users of the Services within appropriate limits for educational, ethical and legal reasons.
- You acknowledge that, in order to ensure compliance with legal obligations, administrators may be required to review certain content submitted via the Services to determine whether it is illegal or violates these terms. Administrators may modify, prevent access to, delete or refuse to display content that may violate the law or these terms. However, the administrators otherwise have no obligation to monitor or review any submitted content.
- Administrators routinely monitor the volume of surveys and survey respondents for system management purposes.
- Usage may also be subject to security testing and monitoring in order to ensure compliance with appropriate security policies and guidelines.
- If the University receives a credible report that a violation has occurred, or if, in the course of managing the service, discovers evidence of a violation, then the matter will be referred for investigation, University disciplinary action, and/or criminal prosecution.
Complaints that specific material violates the law or University policy should be reported to the Office of University Counsel.