How do I verify a survey is anonymous

I have been asked to fill up a survey and I am concerned that it is not anonymous as being informed.

Is there a way for participant to know if their confidentiality is really protected? Or we do it by blind faith?

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If in email body or survey it is highlighted it is anonymous, it means team will not use PII data for analysis.

It might be non-anonymous storing emails but it all depends on analysts how they want to analyze data.

It can be determined by link also; personalized link looks different from anonymous link.

Hello @ConcernedSurveyor and good afternoon from a sunny Sweden!

If you set the “Anonymize responses” to On under the Survey Option > Security (at the bottom) then you can even email the surveys out and the only thing you will get back are the responses. The emails will not be captured in the response data. So enabling that is the absolute best way ensuring the survey is entirely anonymous.

All the best

-Mattias

The first market research company I ever worked for had some legal concerns about anonymity (we were using CATI and phone surveys heavily as well as intercept surveys). As a standard practices we stopped using the word “anonymous” because it felt like too high of a bar and we’d never be able to follow through on people’s expectations. Instead we always used the phrase “strictly confidential.” It was much more attainable and more accurate to the way we stored data.

Thanks for all the responses.

The email with the link is sent using noreply@qemailserver.com by the organization. I don't think I can trust that as the automated part at the bottom does not indicate anonymous. Only the custom message from the boss. Also, in the Qualtrics form, there is no indication that it is anonymous.

I omitted the some data in the link I got. It is in this format.

https://[orgid].au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/[formID]?Q_DL=[Distribution List ID]&Q_CHL=email

Based on my understanding, I would think that it is not anonymous and there is some tracking done.

I asked another friend and his url is different from mine in the DistributionList ID.

The organization will likely know based on our responses who or which group responded what in their survey. Which in the case where the boss declared anonymity should not be trusted.

Any further insights from the community is well appreciated.

Really wish that Qualtrics have a verification page to proof my point or at least give participants a way to validate the form is really anonymous.

Just did a free survey with my personal account. Seems that there is no way anyone particiting will be able to confidently say it is anonymous or not.

I didn’t see any indication on both the email and form that it is anonymous as a participant.

Maybe a new feature so that user can check and validate the security of the form? Or a statement in the form that cannot be changed by the user?

Thanks for all the responses.

I omitted the some data in the link I got. It is in this format.

https://[orgid].au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/[formID]?Q_DL=[Distribution List ID]&Q_CHL=email

Based on my understanding, I would think that it is not anonymous and there is some tracking done.

I asked another friend and his url is different from mine in the DistributionList ID.

The organization will likely know based on our responses who or which group responded what in their survey. Which in the case where the boss declared anonymity should not be trusted.

Any further insights from the community is well appreciated.

Really wish that Qualtrics have a verification page to proof my point or at least give participants a way to validate the form is really anonymous.

You’re right- that URL indicates they are probably collecting something about the participant. Those query strings reference the contact directory, although what it’s populated with is up to them. It may also be used to track things like participant source (e.g. everyone probably has “email” attached to the URL to track that as well) - it may or may not be PII they are collecting.

If they haven’t disabled it, you could get tricky truncate the URL to access the truly anonymous version:
https://[orgid].au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/[formID]

In my organization, we are careful to never claim employee surveys are “anonymous” rather they are “confidential.” We do collect PII, BUT it’s only used to collect helpful demographic info (E.g. Team/Division), and the PII itself is never sent to leadership or stakeholders. Perhaps this is the langauge they need to be using?

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