Anonymous questionnaires

[shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green)]

My partner is a participant in a long term psychological study. I have been
asked to fill out a questionnaire to aid in this study. Some of the
questions address issues that I would never answer non-anonymously. After
speaking with the research director, I ended up with the following problem:
is there a way that would allow the institute to

1. Correlate my answers to the answers of my partner.
2. Verify that I have indeed sent in a filled out questionnaire (and send
me a check for participating).
3. Allow a supervisory agency, such as the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, to verify that the researchers did not just make up all the
data - that is to allow an audit.
4. Protect my privacy by making it impossible to correlate my name to the
answers given.

I would very much like to help to advance medical knowledge, but am
concerned what might happen once the institute is forced to hand over all
accumulated data to the Kommunal Kare Kontrol Kommittee under the Health
Care and Crime Prevention Act of 1998.

The researchers seem to think that there is no way to satisfy all the above
criteria. I, after following discussions on this list for a long time, am
not so sure. I intend to forward any workable suggestions (if the problem
even has a solution) to the researchers. I am sure that better privacy
protection would not only increase the number of participants, but also the
quality of the data.

Thank you all in advance,



-- Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>  PGP public key by finger