Hello everyone,
I have been trying to solve this for a while and I am stumped. I need to make a question that associates either a country or city with longitude and latitude coordinates but cannot identify the exact location of the person making the entry. Essentially, I need to make a map that can show where around the world (generally) are entries being entered from while still ensuring privacy both in the data set and in the eventual map representation. How can I do this?
One approach would be asking the country or the city to the user (or provide a list of countries/cities to pick from, if applicable).
Then, in the post-processing of data, you could use a batch geocoding service to get the latitude and longitude per each of the entries. (Like https://www.geocod.io/upload/) Moreover, if you are into coding, this can be scripted by using our API and any decoding API like OpenCage Geocoding API Documentation.
Finally, importing the geocoded dataset into a third-party service like our own Microreact or Google Maps or Carto will show you a map based on your approximate locations.
If your use case works with a preset of locations (list of cities for example), you could also do some pre-geocoding directly in Epicollect5 by mapping each city to its latitude and longitude like we did on this project → Epicollect5 - EC5 Approximate Location
You could still use Epicollect5 to show a map but since Epicollect5 requires a LOCATION question to do so, you will have to clone the original project, add a LOCATION question to the cloned project and bulk upload your geocoded data to the cloned project. See also Bulk Uploads - Epicollect5 Data Collection User Guide
We hope this is helpful.
Could you round the gps coordinates to the .01 degree? That would put you in the general vicinity (6 miles or so), and masks the users exact location. Or choose what accuracy. Then use mapping to find the city/country.