What is the difference between anonymous and confidential research?
A response is anonymous if NOBODY but the respondent knows who it came from. For example, a survey questionnaire which is returned without any identifiers at all is anonymous. In contrast, a confidential situation is one in which someone KNOWS the identity of the respondent but that information is protected by some measure(s). For example, if you promise to remove the name from a survey questionnaire and to substitute code numbers, you are protecting confidentiality; but, as long as YOU saw the name you cannot claim it is anonymous. It is important to remember that names are not the only identifiers. If you have only one senior citizen in your class, for example, then a questionnaire passed out to the class which asked for age would not be anonymous. There must be no identifiers for the data to qualify as anonymous; data cannot be made anonymous by stripping identifiers (since whoever stripped the identifiers had an opportunity to know the identities).
