Review flagged responses

Cipher flags responses for you to look at. It doesn't remove anything, so the final call is yours. Here is a quick way to work through them.

Find the flagged responses

1. Open your survey and go to Insights.
2. On Overview, check the Flagged by Cipher count to see how many there are.
3. Open Results and click the Cipher column heading to sort by score. Click it again to put the lowest scores at the top.

Flagged responses have a small alert icon next to them.

Review a response

Click a row to expand it. Work through it in this order:

1. Read the flags. Each reason is written in plain words. Hover over one to see what the signal means.
2. Read the reasoning. The line marked Reasoning summarises Cipher's reading of the response. Hover over it to see What tripped the flag.
3. Read the answers. Do they respond to the questions? Do they hang together? Are the written answers specific to your survey, or generic text that could answer anything?
4. Check the times. Each answer shows the time spent on that question. A few quick answers to easy questions are normal. Every answer being quick, including long written ones, is not.

Some questions to ask yourself:

• Does one strong reason explain the flag, such as Likely a bot or Automated browser? Those are rarely innocent.
• Or is it several weak reasons, such as a fast finish and one pasted answer? Those deserve a closer read.
• Is there an innocent explanation? See Why a real person can be flagged.

Mark it genuine or fraud

At the bottom of an expanded response, under Is this response genuine?, choose:

• Genuine if you are satisfied a real person gave this response in good faith.
• Fraud if you are confident it is a bot, a duplicate, or a response given in bad faith.

Surbee confirms with Marked genuine or Marked as fraud. Your verdict is saved as feedback for Cipher.

Keep flagged responses out of your analysis

Some of this happens for you:

• Themes and Analysis leave flagged responses out automatically. Each shows how many flagged responses it left out.
• The PDF report groups written answers into themes the same way, without the flagged responses.

For your own analysis, export the data and filter it:

1. On the Insights page, click Export and choose Excel workbook or CSV.
2. Open the file and filter the Flagged column to No.
3. If you want a stricter cut, you can also filter on the Cipher score column, for example keeping only responses in the Trusted band (80 and above).

Keep the flagged rows in a separate sheet instead of deleting them. If you later decide a flagged response was genuine, you can add it back.