Page 273 - Statistics for Dummies

Anonymity versus confidentiality
If you were to conduct a survey to determine
realize is that these two words are completely
the extent of personal e-mail use at work, the
different in terms of privacy issues. Keeping
results confidential means that I could tie your
response rate would probably be an issue,
information to your name in my report, but I
because many people are reluctant to discuss
their use of personal e-mail in the workplace, Chapter 16: Polls, Polls, and More Polls 257
promise that I won’t do that. Keeping results
or at least to do so truthfully. You could try to anonymous means that I have no way of tying
encourage people to respond by letting them your information to your name in my report,
know that their privacy would be protected even if I wanted to.
during and after the survey.
If you’re asked to participate in a survey, be
When you report the results of a survey, you sure you’re clear about what the researchers
generally don’t tie the information collected to plan to do with your responses and whether or
the names of the respondents, because doing not your name can be tied to the survey. (Good
so would violate the privacy of the respondents. surveys always make this issue very clear for
You’ve probably heard the terms anonymous you.) Then make a decision as to whether you
and confidential before, but what you may not still want to participate.
Beware of conflicts of interest that come up with misleading surveys. For
example, if you are being asked about the quality of your service by the
person who gave you the service, you may not want to respond truthfully. Or,
if your physical therapist gives you an “anonymous” feedback survey on your
last day and tells you to give it to her when you’re done, the survey may have
issues of bias.

Following up, following up, and following up
Anyone who has ever thrown away a survey or refused to “answer a few
questions” over the phone knows that getting people to participate in a
survey isn’t easy. If the researcher wants to minimize bias, the best way to
handle it is to get as many folks to respond as possible by following up, one,
two, or even three times. Offer dollar bills, coupons, self-addressed stamped
return envelopes, chances to win prizes, and so on. Every little bit helps.
If only those folks who feel very strongly respond to a survey, that means
that only their opinions will count, because the other people who didn’t
really care about the issue didn’t respond, and their “I don’t care” vote didn’t
get counted. Or maybe they did care, but they just didn’t take the time to tell
anyone. Either way, their vote doesn’t count.

For example, suppose 1,000 people are given a survey about whether the
park rules should be changed to allow dogs without leashes. Most likely,

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