When It’s Best To Use Surveys For A Dissertation & How To Ensure Anonymity?

When you’re knee-deep in the making of your dissertation, you’ve most likely come to a point where you have to consider an efficient research method. Surveys are a powerful research method and a great way to gather data.

It comes with its own set of challenges, anonymity in particular. For that reason, we're going to be discussing how you can use surveys for your dissertation while ensuring anonymity.

When To Use Surveys

When You Need To Reach A Wide Audience

Conducting surveys is a great option especially if your research question involves a topic that spans different backgrounds, demographics, and regions. On that note, if you want high-quality help with your dissertation, try an essay helper at EssayPro if you want to elevate your paper to new heights. They can help you design exceptional surveys.

Since surveys can be shared online, it makes it easier for you to collect responses from anyone.

By collecting many responses, you enhance the depth and the relevance of your research, since you can refer back to your extensive database of answers.

Plus, if you’re dealing with a large sample size, surveys help you identify patterns and correlations. This will establish validity in your research.

Surveys aren’t exclusive to one field of study either. You can use surveys for a dissertation on Psychology or Business. It’s the perfect way to collect data from a large number of participants for any field.

When You Need To Quantify Data

Surveys are designed to make quantifying and analyzing responses easier. You can go over your data in an organized manner since you can create closed-ended questions with predetermined answers. The data you collect can also be readily used for statistical analysis. By using surveys, you can come to coherent conclusions backed up by data.

If you do it properly, you can come to very precise conclusions. You can also easily:

• Measure variables with accuracy
• Calculate means, deviations, correlations
• Test hypotheses with statistical testing
• Compare data

With the power of quantitative data on your side, you can achieve a level of accuracy and precision that is necessary when dealing with scientific research in a dissertation.

When You Want Time And Cost Efficiency

Surveys are one of the most time and cost-efficient ways to collect data. Since you can administer a survey to a large number of people, you can gather a massive amount of information in a short time. And with the help of online survey platforms, you’re able to reach your target audience regardless of where they are.

Making a survey will typically cost you nothing to only a few pennies. You don’t need complicated equipment or a whole team of people to conduct a survey, so if you’re working with a limited amount of resources, it’s the way to go.

As long as you’re meticulous in the creation and distribution of your surveys, you can succeed in your efforts to gather data.

When You Want Anonymous Answers

Surveys can offer your participants complete anonymity if you design it that way. By prioritizing anonymity, you encourage your audience to provide honest and valuable responses. This can be especially helpful when dealing with more sensitive and controversial topics.

Anonymity reduces response bias by reassuring participants that they won’t be judged for responding with the truth. When your audience knows that their responses won’t be traced back to their person, they can potentially share deeper insights. In turn, your findings will be more authentic.

Safeguarding Anonymity In Surveys

Use Online Survey Platforms

Want an indispensable tool when guaranteeing anonymity in your surveys? Use online survey platforms because they allow you to craft and distribute surveys digitally. By going digital, you erase the need for face-to-face meetups, thus allowing anonymity. To ensure complete privacy for your participants, make sure to disable email-collecting features on your survey platforms.

Don’t forget that you can get help when designing your survey with the aid of a professional by using the dissertation writing service options online. If you want to craft a truly efficient and precise survey for your dissertation, hire an expert.

If you want to go about it on your own, you’ll be glad to know that survey platforms offer tons of features like answer randomization and secure data storage, which will make it easier for you to maintain the anonymity of your participants.

Avoid Questions That Ask Personal Identifiers

When making your survey questions, be sure to avoid questions that ask your participants about their names, contact details, addresses, and so on. You only need to focus on answering your research topic, so there’s no need to make questions that require your audience to give up their details.

If you are obliged to collect some elements of personal information, you can collect this data separately. You don’t need to use your survey to collect this data. You should also make sure to keep this information confidential and safe for your participants.

Guarantee Confidentiality

You should communicate to all your participants that their answers will be kept confidential. You can do this by stating it in your survey intro. You should convey that you’re committed to ensuring their anonymity and that the data collected in the survey is for the sole purpose of progressing your research and analysis.

By being transparent and promising confidentiality, you can build trust in your audience. The more they trust you, the better their answers will be. You’ll also get more chances for them to share private but valuable information if they trust you.

Randomization

To enhance the level of anonymity and to reduce the possibility of identifying a participant based on their responses, you can randomize the order of response options. If response options are done in a fixed order, it will be too easy to identify patterns that will in turn reveal someone’s identity.

By using randomization, you’re ensuring that the response options will be different for each participant. This can be very helpful in cases where you’re dealing with sensitive information.

Protect Data

Once you’ve reached the end of collecting your survey data, you’ll need to secure it. You can do this in many ways. You can use password protection or you can encrypt it. Make sure that only those who you’ve authorized can access the collected data. Survey platforms will also typically have a feature that lets you see who’s accessed the survey data.

It’s your full responsibility to employ all the necessary safeguarding measures to protect the data since data breaches can have negative consequences. Be sure to back up your survey data as well.

You should also consider how long you’ll be storing the data when surveying and research have been done. Be sure to be transparent with the participants about this. If you can delete the data after presenting your dissertation, it would be better to do so than just leave it present online.

Final Thoughts

It’s safe to say that surveying is an efficient, cost-effective, and powerful tool to collect data for your dissertation. The quality of the data is also elevated by the fact that it’s coming from first-hand experiences. This can boost the authenticity and validity of your research, depending on your topic and field.

Safeguarding your participants’ anonymity isn’t too complicated either. As long as you’re meticulous about data protection, you can easily protect your survey data until you have to get rid of it. Online survey platforms typically provide you with all the tools you’ll need to accomplish this.