Survey Privacy and Confidentiality Issues

One of the main challenges in conducting surveys is overcoming your audience's natural aversion toward providing personal information. In short, potential respondents fear that their answers to your survey questions may be leaked or used inappropriately. While you are confident that such leaks or misuse of the data will not happen, you must convince your population sample. First, it is important to understand their objections related to the privacy of their responses. Only be realizing your sample's concerns can you begin to address them effectively. Below, we'll explore these objections and describe ways in which you can ensure the security of their information.

Common Respondent Objections

The more connected the world becomes, the more cautious many people are with exposing their personal information. Even coaxing relatively benign information such as your respondent's real first and last name can prove challenging. There are 2 primary reasons why people are often unwilling to provide their name, phone number, address, income, and other demographic information.

First, they want to avoid becoming the target of marketing solicitations. Too often, people have given their personal information to survey organizations only to find that their information has been sold to marketing firms. As a result, they begin receiving unwanted sales phone calls and junk mail.

Second, identity theft is a common fear. Respondents are concerned that providing personal information will expose them to potential risk of having their identity stolen. To their credit, there are many unsavory survey organizations who will happily sell respondents' information without regard for the buyers' intentions.

Understanding these common objections allows you to reassure respondents about the confidentiality of their survey answers.

Ways To Ensure Confidentiality

Any time you are conducting a survey that solicits personal information, you will need to implement a number of security protocols to protect that information. You should keep the results of the survey completely separate from each respondents' answers. Whether collected by mail, online, or through a telephone interview, separating the responses from the results prevents a potential security breach.

Also, access to individual responses should only be granted to authorized personnel who have a valid reason for needing access. When it is granted, it should be done so behind a username and password. That way, it can be tracked. Further, if personal information is collected online, it should be encrypted. That way, there is little chance of the data being intercepted by unauthorized parties.

Communicate Privacy And Security

While your respondents' concerns about the privacy of their information is valid, your reasons for needing that information may be equally valid. First, having respondents' contact information (phone number, mailing address, etc.) allows you to follow up with them if you need to clarify their responses. Second, it helps you to avoid improperly targeting a portion of the larger population (referred to as "sample bias"). For example, your target population may have completed high-school, but not attended college. By asking respondents to provide their level of education, you can avoid surveying a sample with a significantly higher level of education than your broader population.

In the end, you must reassure respondents that their sensitive personal data is secure. Explain the security and privacy measures that your company has implemented to ensure their confidentiality. Let them know that their responses will only be used to derive statistically valid trends over a broad demographic. If you can comfort respondents' anxiety about privacy concerns, they will be less resistant to offering the information you need. Your response rate will increase as will the accuracy of the information they provide.