Survey Confidentiality
Questions may be more sensitive than we realize. To help ensure confidentiality,
you should only require a minimal amount of information that would be used
to identify a survey participant. In addition, the surveying company's staff or
employees should not use or discuss information that would identify the participants
for anything other than the purpose for which the survey was conducted or for
collecting follow up information from participants.
If information is going to be distributed, the information that identifies participants
should be withheld or masked to avoid the revealing of participants.
Ensuring Confidentiality
The following techniques should help to maintain confidentiality of the
survey participants.
- Use only number or letter codes to link the respondent to a questionnaire. A key containing
the name-to-code linkage information should be stored separately from the questionnaire
- Do not give the names and addresses of survey respondents to anyone outside
the survey organization, including clients
- Questionnaires and identifying information about respondents should be destroyed
after the responses have been entered into the computer
- Delete the names and addresses of survey respondents from computer files used for analysis
- Only conduct statistical tabulations when individual respondents cannot be singled out from the results.
Related Pages
- Web Security