tldr; I don't know of any function in qualtrics that solves this issue. I saw a method that seemed to work well for others.



In my experience you let the participants generate a pseudonym that you can't (or at least it is very hard to do so) trace back to individuals but they can remember/reconstruct. You need some sort of identifier to connect the entries.

(I am not sure if handing this responsibility over to qualtrics is a good idea. But that is a different topic. Also you may want to add hand collected data.)



In studies I have seen something like:

Construct your pseudonym.

First letter: Second letter of the name of the first school.

Second letter: Fourth letter of the name of the grandfather

3-4th letter: cross sum of the birth date...



I think you see the point. Vary for your own needs. The participant is able to reconstruct the pseudonmy. Obviously you should chose the letters not based on data you have.

Pseudonyms are after the period removed from the data.

---

Just wanted to add: It seems to be possible to use IDs connected to the URL and then just distribute the same ID each time.

But! From my experience do students share links. YMMV

---

I'd set up an authenticator block and make them use their student ID to authenticate. Then in the first survey, assign a random new ID to them through the survey flow and use a contact list trigger to add this ID to student list. Then whenever they take another survey, have them authenticate with their student ID and pull in the random new ID that was created. You can annonymize the rest of the data and use this new ID to link the results from all your surveys.

---