The withdrawal unit is the interview
OpenVerbatim treats participant withdrawal as an interview-level action. The interview is removed with its transcript text, coding evidence, review records, disputes, and share items.
Deletion receipts
Participant withdrawal deletes the interview and leaves a reviewable deletion record.
Research data deletion should not leave fragments of a withdrawn interview in transcript rows, coding evidence, public shares, or audio storage.
Product facts
What the withdrawal workflow does.
The product behavior is local and concrete: remove the interview, scrub content-bearing history, and keep a record that the action happened.
Local audio storage is removed
When the withdrawn source has a local storage key, the server resolves the file path and deletes the stored audio object. A missing file is handled as an idempotent deletion case.
The deletion action stays visible
The system writes a withdrawal audit event with the actor and a non-verbatim source reference, so reviewers can see that withdrawal was processed without preserving the interview text.
Receipt flow
The receipt is a deletion trail, not a retained copy.
A useful record has to show that withdrawal was honored without making the withdrawn interview recoverable through another table or log.
Count the affected interview material
Before erasure, OpenVerbatim can summarize transcript utterances, coding instances, share items, and share links tied to the source.
Delete dependent records through cascade deletion
The interview deletion removes downstream transcript, coding, quote, and share records that depend on that interview.
Scrub content-bearing audit payloads
Historic audit records that may contain verbatim material are replaced with a tombstone marker that records consent withdrawal without retaining the words.
Write the withdrawal event
A new audit event records that the source was withdrawn and who initiated the action.
Right to erasure language needs careful boundaries
Interview data can carry participant identity even when names are absent. OpenVerbatim's withdrawal behavior is built around that risk: a participant's withdrawal removes the source record and the analysis records that depend on it.
The page uses deletion receipt in the operational sense. It means the system can show that a withdrawal action was processed and what scope was affected. It does not claim legal compliance for a study, institution, or jurisdiction.
Audit history is tombstoned where it may contain verbatim text
Some audit events are historical facts: a suggestion was created, a decision happened, a public share was prepared. If those payloads include withdrawn interview content, OpenVerbatim replaces the payload with a consent-withdrawn tombstone instead of keeping the quote.
Related trust pages
The same consent boundary affects disclosure and sharing.
OpenVerbatim entity
What OpenVerbatim is.
OpenVerbatim is an open-source (Apache-2.0) qualitative data analysis platform for coding and analyzing interview transcripts. AI-suggested codes stay marked as suggestions until a human reviewer confirms or rejects them, and every decision is kept in an audit trail. The full feature set is available when self-hosted; there is no paid feature wall.
FAQ
Participant withdrawal and deletion questions
What happens when a qualitative research participant withdraws consent?
OpenVerbatim handles the withdrawal at the interview level. The source and its dependent transcript, coding, quote, and share records are deleted.
Does OpenVerbatim keep a deletion receipt?
It keeps a reviewable audit record that the withdrawal action occurred, including the actor and affected scope returned by the withdrawal endpoint. It does not claim a cryptographic deletion proof.
Are old audit events kept after participant withdrawal?
Historic audit rows remain as skeleton records where needed, but content-bearing payloads tied to the withdrawn interview are tombstoned so the participant's words are no longer retained there.
Does participant withdrawal remove shared quotes?
Yes. Share items tied to the withdrawn interview are deleted. Share links that become empty are revoked, and public access returns a stopped-sharing response.
Try the evidence loop
Treat participant withdrawal as a data event, not a cleanup note.
OpenVerbatim keeps the deletion action reviewable while removing the withdrawn interview from analysis and sharing surfaces.