Can I promise anonymity to panel respondents?

When setting up a survey, balancing respondent privacy with data quality is essential. While Conjointly offers the option to anonymise responses, doing so has implications for the quality of your data. How anonymity works depends on whether Conjointly provides the sample or you provide your own.

In either case, any consent or warning screen you add must state, in this or equivalent wording, that Conjointly and its subprocessors will have access to the data for the purposes of recording and analysing responses.

When Conjointly provides the sample

When you use a predefined panel, we cannot offer anonymity. Although the Anonymise Responses option is available in general, it is incompatible with most of the response quality management settings that panels rely on. Respondents recruited through our panels already see a consent screen before they begin, and Conjointly must record metadata such as IP addresses for quality control purposes, so we cannot guarantee total anonymity for panel respondents.

If you choose to add your own warning or consent screen on top of this, it must include the disclosure noted above.

When you provide your own sample

When you bring your own sample, you are free to add whatever consent screen suits your project, provided it still includes the disclosure noted above. Because Conjointly and its subprocessors will have access to the data, you cannot promise respondents complete anonymity even when using your own sample.

What to use instead: “confidentiality”

If you wish to include a privacy notice at the start of your survey, we recommend using the word “confidentiality” instead of “anonymity.” The following is example wording to adapt to your project’s actual data handling:

All information collected will be used for research purposes only.

Conjointly and its subprocessors will have access to your data for the purposes of recording and analysing responses.

Your responses will remain confidential, and results will be reported only in aggregate.

If anonymisation is mandatory

We strongly recommend against fully anonymising responses, as it directly compromises data quality. IP addresses are one of the primary tools used to identify and filter out low-quality and fraudulent responses, such as duplicate entries.

If anonymisation is strictly required for your project where we provide sample, please notify us when launching. However, please be aware that we cannot guarantee data quality in these instances, as we will lack the necessary metadata to conduct our standard quality checks.