Anonymous vs Confidential Surveys – What’s the difference?
Making your survey anonymous or confidential is a great way to encourage candid, honest responses and, in some cases, boost response rates. Anonymity and confidentiality are not the same, and it is important to ensure you are using the right language when communicating with potential survey respondents.
Anonymous Surveys
In an anonymous survey, a respondent cannot be identified, even by the individual administering the survey. Anonymous surveys do not collect or embed any unique identifiers, including, but not limited to: name, email address, student/employee ID, or phone number. For a survey to be anonymous, you must ensure that the software you are using is set to not record IP addresses. Qualtrics makes anonymizing IP addresses and contact information easy.
Even if you are not collecting unique identifiers, your survey may not be anonymous if you are embedding or collecting demographic data. If any combination of variables in your demographic data could likely identify a respondent, your survey may not be anonymous. For example, if you’ve included gender, race/ethnicity, school/college, and have a respondent who is identified as a Male, American Indian/Alaska Native, in X College, someone may be able to reasonably assume the respondent’s identity and therefore your survey may not be anonymous.
If you’re embedding or collecting demographic data in your survey and aren’t sure if doing so will remove anonymity, please reach out to OIRE to discuss.
Confidential Surveys
In a confidential survey, a respondent could be identified, through unique identifiers or a combination of demographic variables, but the survey administrator is promising to not disclose the identifiable information to others. When administering a confidential survey, you must ensure proper data collection and storage so that others cannot access the information.
In order to maintain confidentiality when reporting data from a confidential survey, responses must be de-identified. The most common way to de-identify data is to only report aggregated data, and not report data for groups that, when aggregated, still have a small sample size. OIRE commonly uses 5 or 10 as the minimum sample size for reporting de-identified data.
While we recommend embedding demographic data whenever possible, there may be times when you need to ask demographic items. In these cases, it can be helpful to include a statement about how data will be de-identified that supplements your initial confidentiality statement. For example:
Only de-identified, aggregated data will be shared in any reporting of the survey findings. Demographic data will not be broken out by group unless there are at least 10 representatives in that group.
Open-Response Items
For both anonymous and confidential surveys, there are additional challenges to consider when including open-response items. Survey respondents may include identifying details, share information unrelated to the survey, or disclose information that raises concerns. For these reasons, we strongly encourage you to include the following language any open-response items:
Note that your response may be seen by multiple people, including campus leadership. If you choose to share identifiable information, such as names, we cannot guarantee anonymity/confidentiality. Information disclosed may or may not initiate outreach or a formal investigation and does not constitute official reporting to the university.
Emailing Surveys
When sending anonymous or confidential surveys, it is best practice to inform participants in the initial email if their response is anonymous or confidential. We recommend including a brief statement explaining anonymity/confidentiality as it relates to your survey.
Sample Language for Emailing Anonymous Surveys
Your response to this survey is anonymous. We know that you must have the assurance your responses are anonymous and secure if we are to receive accurate and candid feedback. Survey participants' privacy is of utmost importance to us, and strict internal safeguards are in place to ensure that privacy.
No identifiable information is being collected with your response, and your response cannot be connected to you in any way.
Survey responses will be aggregated for analysis and reporting. Your anonymity is our first duty of care and will be protected in all reports resulting from this survey. We are committed to ensuring that individuals can provide candid feedback with confidence.
Sample Language for Emailing Confidential Surveys
Your response to this survey is confidential. We know that you must have the assurance your responses are confidential and secure if we are to receive accurate and candid feedback. Survey participants' privacy is of utmost importance to us, and strict internal safeguards are in place to ensure that privacy.
No one outside of [office] has access to survey respondents’ identities or to files that may connect names or email addresses with answers to survey questions.
Survey responses will be aggregated for analysis and reporting. We will aggregate the data into groups of 10 or more responses in order to maintain the confidentiality of survey participants. If any demographic group or combination of group characteristics has fewer than 10 individuals, those data will not be reported. [office] will not provide any findings that would risk making someone identifiable due to the uniqueness of their demographic characteristics. Your confidentiality is our first duty of care and will be protected in all reports resulting from this survey. We are committed to ensuring that individuals can provide candid feedback with confidence.
