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The Power of Anonymous Surveys

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The Power of Anonymous Surveys Employee Engagement
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Its important to make survey respondents feel comfortable when you want to gather a large volume of feedback. As your respondents may refrain from providing honest feedback for fear of having their personal information revealed. 

This brings us to our solution – Anonymous surveys. 

Anonymous survey maker is the perfect tool to help you conduct surveys without gathering additional information about your respondents. Organizations can collect more accurate feedback by allowing respondents to share honest opinions without revealing their identity. This can help you make better decisions and improve business outcomes. 

In this blog, we’ll explore why you should create anonymous surveys, several use cases, and the best practices.

What is an anonymous survey?

An anonymous survey allows survey respondents to keep their identities private while taking the survey. The survey software you leverage to conduct an anonymous survey doesn’t collect any Personally Identifiable Information or PII. Data,, such as demographics, devices, email, IP address, etc., is not collected or stored with the survey response. 

In simple terms, anonymous surveys ensure that no respondents are identified. 

How do anonymous surveys differ from confidential surveys?

The survey responses in anonymous surveys are not connected to any personal information of the respondents. 

However, in a confidential survey, the feedback is connected to personal information. 

For example, if you are gathering data from employees, the information is kept private in the case of confidential surveys. The organization pledges for the confidentiality and privacy of the information. Although, certain administrators can have access to the data in order to identify respondents if required.

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Why should you conduct an anonymous survey?

Anonymous surveys offer a wide range of benefits. Here are some key reasons you should leverage an anonymous survey creator. 

1. Gather honest responses:

When respondents are confident that their feedback won’t trace back to them, they are more likely to answer honestly. Anonymity enables your respondents to offer candid responses. 

For example, employees won’t have to fear retaliation from their superiors if they provide any negative feedback. 

2.  Accurate data and insights:

By anonymizing the surveys, you empower respondents to share their opinions without fearing judgment. This encourages survey respondents to offer reliable and accurate data. 

For example, a patient may be hesitant to offer honest opinions about the care quality they are receiving at the moment. However, anonymity allows them to share a reliable opinion when they know their names won’t be revealed. 

3. Reduce response bias:

Respondents may want to impress your brand or stick to socially acceptable answers on a non-anonymous survey. 

When respondents are sure their feedback won’t be linked back to their names, they will most likely give honest feedback. This means less “social desirability bias” and more accurate insights. 

This way, you can minimize the risk of response bias and objectively examine the collected data. 

4. Increase survey response rate:

Respondents are likelier to participate in a survey when they know their identity won’t be revealed. 

Respondents feel more comfortable responding to anonymous surveys, especially when the survey asks sensitive questions. 

5. Protect respondent privacy:

Respondents may have skipped over your surveys or dropped off for having to share their personal information in a survey. Anonymizing surveys helps you respect and protect respondents’ privacy. 

Overall, anonymizing surveys can help you build trust and honesty with your respondents. You can gather insights on topics that may otherwise be difficult to obtain. This brings us to our next point, when should you use anonymous surveys? 

Additional read: How to secure your surveys?

When should you create anonymous surveys?

There are three specific instances when you should leverage the anonymous survey maker in your survey software. 

1. When you are gathering sensitive data →

Create anonymous surveys when your goal is to gather sensitive data. If you want a patient to share their health history or an employee to share intimate aspects of their life, it’s best to anonymize the survey. 

2. When you want a quick poll →

Quick polls to identify your product’s best or worst feature don’t require you to gather PII data from respondents. Leverage an anonymous poll maker to start a poll and gather insights. 

3. When you don’t need to follow up →

Sometimes the goal of your survey could be to gather objective and quantifiable data. Or, you may need the timeframe to follow up with respondents. 

In those instances, an anonymous survey can help you gain the insights you need. 

Conducting anonymous surveys is helpful in certain situations. However, some cons don’t allow you to use the data effectively.

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What are the disadvantages of anonymous surveys?

Contextualizing the data and following up with the respondents helps you understand your audience better. It enables you to tailor the decisions and improve business outcomes. 

Here are some of the disadvantages of creating anonymous surveys. 

1. You can not follow up with respondents:

You can’t follow up with the survey respondents without any Personal Identifiable Information. This means you can neither thank them for taking the survey nor ask further questions. 

2. You can’t conduct a deeper analysis:

Anonymous surveys don’t allow you to compare the survey results with different survey data. You cannot compare customer or employee experience over time if you can’t trace the data back to them. 

3. You cannot contextualize the survey responses:

Without any personal information, you won’t be able to identify what’s causing issues in customer/employee experience. 

For example, say an employee complains about the onboarding process. If it’s an anonymous survey, you cannot identify what they are upset about or who to contact to gather further insights.

What are the different use cases of anonymous surveys?

There are many use cases of anonymous surveys. Here we will discuss four examples of leveraging the benefit of an anonymous survey.  

1. Employee feedback →

Leverage an anonymous employee survey tool to gather honest employee feedback. Often, employees refuse to take a survey or offer general answers as they fear their responses will be used against them. 

Create anonymous surveys to encourage participation and gather actionable insights to improve employee satisfaction. 

2. Customer experience feedback →

Customers may be thrilled to receive personalized product/service recommendations. However, they may not want to share intimate details or demographic data such as income or intimate products. 

By anonymizing the survey, you can get a general overview of how your inventory should look and improve customer experience. 

3. Social surveys →

Anonymous surveys are the perfect way to gather data from at-risk groups and protect their identities. Using online survey tools, you can gather anonymous feedback online without the risk of revealing anyone’s identity. 

4. Healthcare surveys →

Patients may feel uncomfortable or confident sharing their medical history due to the fear of embarrassment. Create anonymous surveys to assure patients that their feedback will not be used for any other reason.

Anonymizing surveys allows respondents to share honest feedback without fearing retribution. Additionally, it helps you gather a large volume of honest and reliable data. 

Let’s look at some of the best practices to ensure effective anonymous surveys.

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Best practices to create anonymous surveys

Here are five tips on how you can keep survey anonymous and engaging at the same time. 

1. Communicate with respondents that the survey is anonymous:

Communicate with your survey participants that their responses will remain anonymous. Let them know clearly what information you will collect from the survey. 

Depending on the sensitivity of the survey and who your audiences are, you need to provide more details on the anonymity of the survey. 

The best place to inform them of this is in the welcome or introduction screen. 

2. Write your questions carefully:

If you ask demographic or personal questions, the survey has no point of anonymity. Make sure the questions don’t help you create a respondent’s profile. 

Create anonymous surveys that don’t reveal anything personal or unique about the respondent. 

3. Disable custom variables:

Often survey software automatically stores custom data such as email address, name, mailing address, etc. 

Make sure you disable the collection of customer variables and ensure complete anonymity. 

4. Survey a large sample:

Surveying a large sample group can help you maintain the anonymity of your survey response. 

You may think your survey is anonymous, but you realize it is aimed at a specific industry or location. This means you can identify and trace the answer back to the respondents. 

Surveying a large sample allows you to go beyond a specific industry or location. There is less risk of identifying a respondent. 

5. Carefully select the channel:

Anonymous feedback online can help you reach a large sample and enable respondents to remain anonymous. Respondents can take the survey from their devices without revealing their identities. Phone surveys are also a reliable option when it comes to anonymous surveys.

Conclusion

Organizations can create anonymous surveys to gather reliable, unbiased feedback and build customer trust. In today’s world, where data privacy is central to organizational growth, you should consider anonymous surveys to understand your audience better.

FAQs

1. What are the benefits of anonymous surveys?

Anonymous surveys help you increase response rates, build trust, gather honest feedback, and ensure data accuracy. 

2. How to ensure anonysmity in surveys?

When you create anonymous surveys, avoid asking identifying questions, such as names, email addresses, or other demographic data. Leverage a data collection channel that prevents identification and mask IP address. 

3. Can you collect demographic data using anonymous surveys?

Yes, you can gather demographic information using anonymous surveys. However, it is important to ensure that the demographic questions don’t gather the information that can help identify the respondents. 

You must also let the respondents know why you are gathering the demographic information. Additionally, give them the option to skip any demographic question.

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July 19, 2021 No Comments