Surveys and program evaluations

Regardless of which platform you select to carry out your survey, you will need to check a variety of settings to see if the responses you collect will truly be anonymous. For example, survey platforms may have default settings that collect the IP address and/or email address of each participant.

There are circumstances in which the collection of IP or email addresses would be appropriate, such as giving the participants the option of saving their work and coming back to the survey at a later date to finish entering their responses; to control the participant audience (i.e. surveys that only allow participants with specific email domains); or to ensure that the survey is not filled out multiple times by the same participant. If you require that level of control for your survey, it will be classified as Confidential, not Anonymous.

However, if you want to create a truly anonymous survey these settings need to be disabled.

Important note: selecting the appropriate settings to create an anonymous survey usually needs to be completed during the development of your survey and not after the survey invitations have been sent out.

Contact your service provider for details on how to make your survey responses anonymous or view their website for articles or how-to videos.

• SurveyMonkey: How do I make surveys anonymous?

The collection of demographic information can be a vital component of your research as the results will evaluate whether or not your pool of participants reflect the demographics of your target community, or to compare responses across specific demographics.

Under FIPPA, the collection of personal information (demographics) must be kept to the minimum amount that is required to meet an authorized purpose. Therefore, it is recommended that the amount of demographic information collected in your survey is kept to only the demographics in which you have a business purpose to collect. Collecting additional demographic information beyond what is required for your study would be considered a breach of the participants' personal information under FIPPA.

The collection of demographic information does not instantly classify your survey as Confidential. To determine the classification of your survey, consider the size of the target audience, as well as the known demographics of your audience.

For example, if your target audience is large (i.e. the entire university student body), collecting demographic information such as age, gender identity, citizenship, etc., would likely not provide you with enough information to identify any of your participants. Therefore, your survey would be classified as Anonymous.

However, if your target audience is comprised of a high percentage of individuals identifying as one gender, and the size of the audience is small and/or familiar to you (such as students within a specific program), collecting demographic information, such as gender identity, will significantly increase the likelihood that some of your participants would be identifiable. Therefore, all of the survey responses belonging to the participants who are identifiable become personal information under FIPPA, and the survey would be classified as Confidential.

Important note: You do not have to be able to identify all of your participants in order for your survey to be classified as Confidential. If there is the potential to identify at least one participant, your survey would be classified as Confidential.

In order to create a survey classified as Anonymous, the response fields in the survey need to be closed from participant input. If any of the response fields include open-text fields that allow the participants to enter their response to the questions being asked, then the survey cannot be classified as Anonymous as the open-text fields provide the participants with the opportunity to enter personal information about themselves (either direct or indirect identifiers).

In order to create a truly anonymous survey, keep all response fields to drop-down lists, buttons or check boxes, or a variation of the likert scale. And make sure that any "Other" response choices do not allow for the input of data from the participant.

Some surveys offer draws or prizes as an incentive to participate. In order to award the draw or prize, a limited amount of the participants’ contact information needs to be collected (i.e. name, email address, phone number). If the draw is not set up properly, the contact information of your participants could be linked with their responses to your survey, resulting in all of their survey responses becoming personal information (even if the survey was set up to be anonymous).

In order to provide a draw to your participants while also ensuring that their responses to your survey are not associated with their identity, you will need to create two separate surveys:

1. The primary survey that you have developed in order to gather responses relevant to your research or program, or event, etc.; and
2. A secondary survey that collects only the contact information required for the draw (a virtual ballot).

Once you have created both surveys, insert the URL of the secondary survey (ballot for the draw) at the end of your primary survey. If someone chooses to enter the draw, they can click the link embedded in the primary survey, which will bring them to the secondary survey. This way, the responses to the primary and secondary surveys will not be linked.

Don't forget: your secondary survey (ballot for the draw) will need a privacy notification statement, even if your primary survey is classified as Anonymous. Visit Contests/Draws/Prizes notification statement the appropriate notification statement.