For many research projects, the ability to ensure survey respondents that their answers are anonymous is essential to the project's success. Anonymous surveys in Alchemer do not store IP or geo-location data.
Benefits of anonymous surveys
There are a variety of reasons why people need to conduct surveys anonymously. A few examples include running private employee feedback surveys so employees feel comfortable giving feedback without the worry of being reprimanded for telling the truth or conducting educational or medical research where privacy is of the utmost importance.
Set up a survey to collect anonymous responses
Creating an anonymous survey is simple. Once you select Anonymous Responses, all incoming responses will stop the storage of any type of identifying information like Geodata, IP address, and email invite data. Additionally, the email invite Status Log will not include Response ID's.
The Anonymous Responses setting is locked once you save your response settings.
To set up your survey to anonymous responses:
- Go to Tools > Response Settings.
- Check the Anonymous Responses option.
If a survey is anonymous:
- Alchemer does not capture the device a respondent took the survey on. Alchemer marks the device as a desktop for all responses collected in a Standard Report.
- Alchemer does not include data for the squid URL variable.
Force all surveys in your account to anonymous
Account Administrators can force all surveys in the account to collect data anonymously. To set this up go to Security > Settings. Select the checkbox next to Force Anonymous Surveys.
You can turn off the Force Anonymous Surveys setting. If you do so, all existing surveys that were set to anonymous as a result of this setting will remain anonymous. Newly created surveys will no longer be set to anonymous.
Anonymous Surveys and Email Campaigns
The Anonymous Responses setting is compatible with Alchemer Email Campaigns. If using these two features together, we will track which contacts have not yet completed the survey and send any reminders that you have set up to these contacts. You will not have visibility to this process and will not be able to tie survey responses to the email addresses.
Best Practice Tip
If you are using anonymous surveys, this is probably because you want to foster trust with your survey respondents. We recommend adding a Greeting Page with informational text at the beginning of your survey to let them know their data is secure and that their response is anonymous!
Check out our Create a Greeting Page in Your Survey Tutorial.
Copy an Anonymous Survey
If you need to copy an anonymous survey, you will have the option to copy the anonymous setting as well*. When copying an anonymous survey, the Make Survey Anonymous setting will be selected by default. Depending on what you want to do with the copy, check/un-check this setting and click Start Building when you're ready.
*If your account has been configured to force all surveys to be anonymous, this option will not be available on an individual survey basis.
Once the copied survey is created with the Make Survey Anonymous setting, the anonymous survey setting cannot be changed.
