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Anonymity and Confidentiality

This is the never-ending tale of Organizational Surveys. Companies which are among the most successful and conscientious users of Organizational Surveys continually grapple with employee anxiety over loss of anonymity and confidentiality. The only response an organization can make is to continually reassure their employees in words, deeds and appearances. If there is no confidence in the protection of personal identity, people will either refuse to participate or distort their answers.

Anonymity and confidentiality can be protected in a number of ways:

Select an outside consulting firm with a separate physical facility to collect the data, do the processing and generate reports.
Maintain all case-wise data records only within the facilities of the consulting firm.
Set a minimum number of cases below which summary statistics or reports are not generated (for example, no reports are generated for groups of fewer than 10 people). Set a minimum number of cases below which demographic reports are not generated (for example, cross tabs on race or gender will not be done for groups smaller than 250).
Designate a single point of contact at your company to authorize special reports or cuts of the data.
Restrict reports of survey results to your immediate organization and hierarchy above, and not to results in other departments.
Counsel managers, in feedback training, not to presume they know who responded in a particular way, announcing their presumption, or acting on that presumption.
Counsel managers, in feedback training, not to encourage people to indicate how they answered specific questions.
Edit the content of written responses for signatures, proper names, and titles.
Conduct the administration in a way that is, on its face, secure from easy violation of confidentiality (sufficient space in a group administration, a repository for completed questionnaires in a group administration which prevents exposure of an individual's responses, individually sealed envelopes addressed to your survey consultant, not allowing management to proctor administrations of their own employees).
Include assurances of anonymity and confidentiality in every communication event for the survey (announcements, advertising, postings, e-mail, letter from the president, videotaped messages, broadcast spots, instructions in the questionnaire, scripts for department meetings, etc.).

It may also be possible for your company to conduct some of the analyses, execute statistical procedures and hypothesis testing on the survey data, produce tabular and graphical displays of quantitative information, and write reports. The data are the property of your organization and your survey consultant can provide you with the data files and record descriptions. [See HOW TO WORK WITH A SURVEY CONSULTANT]

Your company should consider that the protection of the confidentiality of the data and anonymity of the respondents must be maintained in fact and in appearance. This is to ensure candid responses, high participation, and credibility in the process. We counsel against installing a database of survey responses at your company which has case-wise data representing the responses of individuals. When people ask, "Can't you figure out who I am when I tell you what department I am in, how old I am, what my gender is, and so forth?", the answer is, "Yes!" We recommend your company alleviate this concern by assuring respondents that all individual data will be maintained by an independent consulting firm in a repository away from your location, and no one at your organization will have access to case-wise records or original documents