Another tip in a series provided by the Offices of Information Systems & Computing and Audit, Compliance & Privacy

Online surveys are a great tool to use for collecting individual opinions, schedule availability or other information from a group of people. However, surveys should be created in a thoughtful way that respects the privacy of the individual filling out the survey. When conducting anonymous surveys or surveys about a sensitive topic, consider these tips to protect the privacy of those filling out your survey:

• Be mindful about the information you are collecting. Do not collect sensitive data such as credit card data, social security numbers or health data in surveys.

• Avoid using free online survey tools. When collecting survey data, use a survey tool that encrypts the data collected and will not sell the data to third parties. Qualtrics, a Penn-approved vendor, is an appropriate tool to use.   

• When creating an anonymous survey, be mindful that you do not collect information that is so specific or if combined could indirectly identify an individual—then the survey would no longer be anonymous.   

• Qualtrics allows survey creators to anonymize responses by not collecting IP addresses and other identifying information. This can be done via Survey Options > Survey Termination when creating a survey.

• When using free text boxes, remind the individual filling out the survey that it is anonymous. You can do this by adding, “Please do not include any identifying information” to the question text.

Questions about survey creation and privacy can be addressed to privacy@upenn.edu

For more information about Qualtrics see: https://www.library.upenn.edu/using-libraries/tech-equipment/software/qualtrics

For additional tips, see the One Step Ahead link on the Information Security website: https://www.isc.upenn.edu/security/news-alerts#One-Step-Ahead