How Anonymity Can Get Honest Survey Response?

What You’ll Learn

By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to:

• Understand what Anonymity is & why it is important in surveys.
• Identify & implement different strategies to ensure respondent Anonymity.
• Understand the difference between Anonymity & Confidentiality.

1. What is Anonymity in Surveys?

Anonymity in surveys refers to the state of respondents remaining unidentified throughout the survey process. This means that their responses are not linked to their personally identifiable information, such as name, address, or contact details.

2. Why is Anonymity Important in Surveys?

Anonymity is crucial in surveys because it allows respondents to feel comfortable sharing their honest opinions without fear of retaliation.

When respondents are anonymous, they are more likely to provide accurate responses, as they are not concerned about how their answers may be perceived by others.

This increased honesty and openness can lead to more reliable data, which is essential for making informed decisions.

Additionally, anonymity can also help to reduce bias and increase participation rates, as respondents feel more at ease sharing their thoughts and experiences without fear of being identified.

Ensuring anonymity also creates trust between the survey owner and the respondent.

3. BlockSurvey’s Anonymous Feature

BlockSurvey provides a very handy Anonymous Feature. The respondent does not need to manually check for personally identifying question types to ensure Anonymity while answering. BlockSurvey does it for you automatically.

The anonymous feature informs the respondents about the survey’s anonymity with an Anonymous Seal even before taking the survey.

You can find the screenshot below.

The survey’s anonymity is ensured with an anonymous seal. You can allow displaying the anonymous seal on your survey by switching on the anonymous feature. This means the usage of the following question types is not allowed.

• Email
• Phone number
• Website
• Country
• Contact Form
• Payment
• Signature
• Google
• Outlook
• Web3 Identity Verification Networks
• Social Identity Verification Networks

If any modification includes adding the above question types in the survey, then the Anonymous Seal will be turned off. To display the anonymous seal again, you should once again avoid including specified question types.

4. Why is Transparency Important In Surveys?

Now, delving to find why transparency is important in surveys.

For example, for a restaurant employee engagement survey to be successful and valuable, most employees must complete it, and those who do should provide honest answers.

When taking surveys, some restaurant employees worry that their responses will be visible to their supervisors and can be potentially used against them in the future. If you cannot guarantee this won’t happen, then you cannot expect people’s open, honest feedback.

To collect honest feedback, restaurant employees must know they can share their data freely. The system should prevent leaders, managers, and other leaders from connecting responses directly to the respondent.

Most employees are afraid to take employee engagement surveys from their restaurant desktops. This is because they think their IP address, browser information, location, and other personal information can be tracked.

This is why Transparency is important in surveys. There should be transparency on how the data will be handled. This transparency gives confidence to restaurant employees to provide straightforward answers, which fulfills the purpose of the survey.

5. Ways to Assure Respondent Anonymity

Let’s explore a few ways to assure the respondents that their data is safe. These ways help build a rapport between the survey team and the respondents.

5.1. Communicate Clearly

You can begin the survey with a clear statement detailing how the data will be used, stored, and shared. This written communication builds trust right from the beginning. Clear communication on how data will be handled encourages straightforward and honest answers from the respondents.

5.2. Use Encrypted Platforms

Utilize survey platforms that employ encryption and other security measures to safeguard respondent data. BlockSurvey is one such end-to-end encrypted platform. Your data is protected both in transit & rest.

5.3. Avoid Personal Data Collection

Only gather the essential data required for the study. Avoid collecting unnecessary personal details. Think minimalistic when it comes to personal data collection. Ensure that every piece of information gathered serves a specific need and is necessary for the purpose of the study.

5.4. Do Not Share Data

Commit to not sharing respondent data with third parties. This commitment should be taken seriously and should only be bypassed if you obtain prior consent from the respondents themselves.

5.5. Allow Opt-out Options

Provide respondents the flexibility to opt out of certain questions or even choose not to participate in the entire survey. If they feel uncomfortable or if they believe that their privacy might be at risk, they should be able to opt out of the survey anytime.

6. Impact of Assuring Anonymity

Now, discussing the impact of ensuring anonymous, privacy-focused surveys on the respondents. Assuring privacy provides a lot of positive impacts, a few of which are discussed below.

6.1. Increased Honesty

When respondents are assured of their anonymity, they are more likely to provide honest and truthful responses. This is because they are not worried about personal consequences when assured of anonymity.

6.2. Higher Completion Rates

Fear of personal data misuse can lead to survey abandonment. Assurances of data protection can alleviate these fears and lead to higher completion rates. A higher completion rate indicates survey success.

6.3. Trust Building

Repeated assurances and adherence to data protection bring a sense of trust. This sense of trust can lead to respondents being more willing to participate in future surveys or research.

7. Anonymity vs. Confidentiality

Although anonymity and confidentiality sound similar, there are differences between them. Let’s delve into discussing the difference between Anonymity and Confidentiality in Surveys.

7.1. Anonymity

Survey Anonymity means that the collected data does not contain any personally identifiable information. That is, the collected data does not include personally identifiable information like name, email, phone number, country, signature, etc. When data is anonymous, the survey administrator cannot link the data back to the individual respondent.

7.2. Confidentiality

On the other hand, survey confidentiality means that while the survey administrator can identify a given set of responses with a particular respondent, this information is not disclosed or made available to anyone outside the concerned team.

This means you collect personally identifiable data, which is not revealed to a third party without prior approval.

8. When to run Anonymous or Confidential surveys?

Your survey purpose decides whether you need to go for Confidential surveys or Anonymous surveys.

8.1. Running Anonymous Survey - Example

Take the case of restaurant employee engagement surveys again. You want the restaurant employees to provide honest feedback about the restaurant policies. If you want this to happen, then you must eliminate the fear of being identified in an employee engagement survey. This is because personal identification can restrict restaurant employees from giving straightforward and honest opinions. In this case, go for an anonymous survey.

8.2. Running Confidential Survey - Example

You are a restaurant manager and need feedback about establishing a new restaurant branch from different teams in your organization. In this case, you may want to know the team names to make better use of feedback. But at the same time, revealing team names should not cause attitude issues or destroy the rapport between teams. So, go for Confidential surveys, ensuring the personally identifiable results (team information) are accessible only to people who are part of the research team.

Thus, you can choose between running anonymous or confidential surveys based on the purpose of the survey.

Test Your Knowledge

Key Takeaways

• Anonymity allows respondents to share honest opinions without fear.
• Clear communication on the data handling builds trust with respondents.
• Anonymity helps increase participation rates.

Congratulations! You have completed this lesson.