How to delete interviews duplicate in HQ

[mcastillo]

Hello, good afternoon, I want to report an incident that occurred with our production environment, which has duplicated interviews for the same assignment.

The question is, we see that there is a button to delete interviews but not even the “admin” user can do it. I would like to ask if today there is a way to do it since we verified other cases where in 2019 and 2021 it was indicated that it was not possible but today in 2025 I do not know if this functionality was activated.

On the other hand, we believe that it would be good if there was a parameter so that users cannot enter online so that HQ can enable the above because this is our duplication problem. The interviewers started surveys on a tablet and then in web mode and when synchronizing we now have 2 interviews with the same assignment number or another solution may be to not allow creating assignments that have a synchronized status on the tablet until the first version of the interview is synchronized.

[asmelash]

Dear @mcastillo
Thank you for noting that duplicate interviews under the same assignment when interviewers start data collection on a tablet and then again via web mode before synchronizing.
Survey Solutions still does not support direct deletion of completed interviews from the HQ interface, not even by the admin user.
From my experience, the best approach to handling duplicate interviews is to identify and clean them during the data cleaning stage post data collection.
Additionally, supervisors can reject the questionnaire back to the interviewer (if the interview is not yet approved), allowing the interviewer to discard the interview.
Regarding your suggestion for additional features, such as the option to restrict online mode or enforce assignment lock-in after the first sync, as well as any advanced methods to delete duplicate interviews (mainly using API tools), @sergiy or @vitalii can provide further insights.

[sergiy]

@mcastillo

I want to report an incident that occurred with our production environment, which has duplicated interviews for the same assignment

This is not really an incident. It is perfectly possible for the number of delivered interviews to be more than specified, which may arise under different scenarios, a most common of which is described in the Excessive interviews documentation page.

@mcastillo

we see that there is a button to delete interviews but not even the “admin” user can do it.

This is not correct. An admin user can delete interviews with that button, but not just any interviews. When the button is pressed it mentions directly:

Put simply, if there are two interviews, of which one is completed via CAPI and another CAWI you can delete none of them (because they are both completed).

@mcastillo

we verified other cases where in 2019 and 2021 it was indicated that it was not possible but today in 2025 I do not know if this functionality was activated.

Providing links to those cases could help bring up the context. In any case the deletion works as described above, and there is currently no intention to give any user the power to destroy the data, which other users rely on.

@mcastillo

The interviewers started surveys on a tablet and then in web mode and when synchronizing we now have 2 interviews with the same assignment number or another solution may be to not allow creating assignments that have a synchronized status on the tablet until the first version of the interview is synchronized.

This is permitted intentionally: as an interviewer you have two alternatives to work (web interface or mobile device) and this redundancy is useful, e.g. for the cases when the tablet runs out of power, etc.

@mcastillo

it would be good if there was a parameter so that users cannot enter online so that HQ can enable the above because this is our duplication problem.

@mcastillo, please confirm, do you mean that you are requesting to disallow interviewers to log in to the server via the web interface completely?

@asmelash

From my experience, the best approach to handling duplicate interviews is to identify and clean them during the data cleaning stage post data collection.

This may depend on the specific survey/workflow. The duplicates can be easily identified during data collection (especially if it lasts for many months) via scheduled scans. In that case another alternative is to introduce an artificial team “trashbin” and reject redundant interviews there. This solution has been discussed already numerous times (5775, 1341, etc).

@asmelash

supervisors can reject the questionnaire back to the interviewer (if the interview is not yet approved), allowing the interviewer to discard the interview.

If the interview has been transmitted to the server (from the interviewer’s device) rejection will not help. Discard functionality will not be available for interviews that were seen on the server.

@mcastillo , why cannot this issue be handled administratively? How comes the interviewer interviews the same household twice without realizing she was already there? And the respondent doesn’t object? Which protocol is being used? What is this survey? At which step the presence of duplicates is causing any harm? And what specifically?