How to create an anonymous survey

Anonymity gives a person the conviction of being protected irrespective of the choices they make or the opinions they put forward, which in turn empowers them to be honest and open as much as they can. Being a survey creator, the least important is who's responding to your survey, and the most valuable one is the quality of data taken out from the survey. That's why anonymous surveys play a significant role in producing the best quality outcome to enhance the understanding of the subject behind the survey.

Be it a feedback survey or an employee satisfaction survey, it is proven that anonymous surveys are the most effective ones to measure it. If your goal is to improve the experience, anonymous surveys will definitely reward you with candid responses which help you make better decisions.

How to build anonymous surveys

Before jumping to that, What is an anonymous survey?

An anonymous survey is a survey that does not collect any identifying information about the respondent. This means that the person conducting the survey will need help to determine the identity of the person who completed the study. Anonymous surveys are used to encourage honesty and openness in responses, as respondents may feel more comfortable answering with honesty if they do not have to reveal their identity.

The process of creating an anonymous survey involves several steps:

• Identify the goals of the survey.
• Choose an anonymous survey platform.
• Design the survey.
• Communicate your intentions
• Choose the best distribution method and collect responses.
• Analyze the results.

Each step is essential in ensuring that the survey is successful and that the results are meaningful.

Step 1: Identify the Goals of the Survey

The first step in creating an anonymous survey is to identify the goals of the survey. Clarifying the objectives of the survey will help you focus on what information you are trying to gather and what is the purpose of the study. It is also essential to consider the target audience when designing a survey – who will be taking the survey, and what type of questions should be included?

Step 2: Choose the right platform

Not every survey platform you see today is anonymous. Most of them store some personal information like IP address or other digital prints of the participants, which means you are not running a completely anonymous survey. So it would be best if you were careful in choosing the right platform; platforms like BlockSurvey are the best and most secure to host your research survey to deliver the absolute data privacy your participants deserve.

Step 3: Design the Survey

Once you have chosen the platform, it's time to design the survey. There are several best practices for designing an anonymous survey, such as keeping questions short and to the point, using simple language that is easy to understand, and avoiding leading questions that might influence responses.

You might think your questions can't be linked to any individual respondent, but that depends on the possible answers. Watch for questions that reveal specific information about individuals, their family members, or experiences that may be unique to them or someone with their background. Additionally, it's important to avoid jargon or technical terms that may confuse respondents, uses multiple-choice or rating-scale questions whenever possible, group similar questions together, and format the survey, so it looks professional and is easy to read.

Step 4: Communicate your intentions

Let the participants know why you choose an anonymous questionnaire and how you respect your participants' privacy. Communicate what information you will and won't collect, who will be assessing the feedback, and how you intend to follow up. These communications will instill confidence and set expectations for a more successful survey experience for everyone involved.

Step 5: Choose the best distribution method and collect responses

The next step is to distribute the survey and collect responses from participants. Sharing the anonymous survey link through email or posting it on social media handles is one of the best methods of distribution. It would help if you kept in mind that the right distribution channel is the way to reach the right participants for effective outcomes. To ensure that responses remain anonymous, use a unique identifier instead of a name for each answer and do not ask for contact information (such as email address or phone number). Additionally, make sure that respondents cannot be identified by their responses.

Step 5: Analyze the Results

Once you have collected responses from participants, it's time to analyze the results. There are several tools and methods for analyzing anonymous survey results – statistical analysis tools can help identify patterns or trends in the data. In contrast, qualitative analysis can help interpret open-ended questions or generate insights from qualitative data.

It's also important to be aware of any potential biases or limitations in your data set when interpreting results. Anonymous questionnaires can reduce the influence of social desirability bias, where participants may feel pressure to give responses that they believe are more socially acceptable. Not only from the participant side, but It also helps your strategy team to analyze the results without bias that they would otherwise have towards the known participants.

Why choose the Anonymous survey

Providing anonymity to your participant is a crucial element of efficient survey practices. Survey creators need to respect the privacy of their participants and ensure that their data is kept secure and confidential. This includes protecting the anonymity of participants by not collecting any identifying information from them, it is not only confined to details like name, age, country, or any other demographic entity, but also it should provide the participants with absolute digital anonymity, including their IP address and other personal digital information.

Even the most renowned survey platforms that claim themselves to be anonymous allow their survey creators to store the respondents' IP addresses; this makes you lose your privacy. That is where BlockSurvey makes a significant difference.

BlockSurvey is the most secure survey tool with the highest data security for survey creators and respondents. BlockSurvey is an end-to-end encrypted survey tool with a pack of rich features that provides you with complete privacy, anonymity, and security.

"Decentralizing is the only way to own your data. BlockSurvey is the very first online survey tool that uses Stacks Blockchain, which is secured by Bitcoin to power up the surveys." And also, it is an AI-driven survey tool; creating surveys with AI is much easier and faster. BlockSurvey, by default, does not collect the meta identity or the IP address of its users, and also, strictly, there are no ads or trackers on the platform.

Apart from privacy, there are several other benefits to using anonymous surveys, including:

Increased honesty: Participants may be more likely to give honest answers when they are not required to provide their names or other identifying information. This can be particularly important when asking sensitive or personal questions.

Increased participation: Some participants may be hesitant to participate in research if they have to reveal their identity. By offering the option to remain anonymous, researchers may be able to increase the number of people who are willing to take part in the study.

Reduced bias: If participants are aware that their responses will be linked to their identity, they may be more likely to give socially desirable answers rather than their true beliefs or experiences. Removing this possibility can help reduce bias in the data collected.

Overall, anonymous surveys can be an effective tool for collecting data from a large number of participants, particularly when honesty and privacy are important considerations.

Build Your First Anonymous survey

Sign-up to BlockSurvey now and join thousands of other privacy activists around the world who enjoy complete privacy and ownership of their data.

During Sign-up, you will receive your secret keys; the account you created is a Decentralized Identity(DID), which gets anchored in Bitcoin's blockchain through Blockstack. A secret key is a set of 12 words that proves your ownership of our account/identity. It is used to access your identity on the Blockstack's blockchain.

Design your first completely anonymous survey in BlockSurvey and share it with your participants easily, as BlockSurvey supports easy integrations and effortless distribution.

Analyze your data with best-in-class built-in analytics to extract the quality information from the survey created.