Research Tips

Confidentiality Issues

In market research, respondents are usually promised that their responses will not be linked to them individually, but rather aggregated with other responses. This encourages people to respond honestly and removes concerns that responses may be used for sales purposes.

However, occasionally responses do need to be individually identifiable. For example, this may be necessary to follow up with non-respondents or with people who respond in a particular way, or to link the results of one survey with a previous survey. In these situations, it’s important to tell respondents what will be done and why.

In all situations, it’s important not to use individually-identifiable data in ways not disclosed to respondents at the time the data are collected. This goes against the codes of practice of most market research organizations, and is illegal in some jurisdictions.