Balancing Amplification with Anonymity: A discussion on how to protect participants' identities while sharing their experiences

Abstract Information: Amplifying participant voices is critical to learn about program challenges and successes. But evaluators must also protect participants and ensure that any promised anonymity or confidentiality is upheld. This balance is especially difficult to strike in evaluations with small numbers of participants and in internal evaluations, but also in analyses of large-scale datasets where research questions focused on a particular subgroup may result in very small numbers of respondents. This session will present several such situations, the challenges presenters faced, the different approaches they took, and the factors involved in their decision-making process. A discussion will follow about appropriate steps and practices to include such important input while also protecting participants. The projects to be discussed come from the fields of K-12 education, higher education, and public health. They include: an evaluation of a research experience for a small group of undergraduates where significant program and safety concerns were raised, necessitating elevating the reported feedback while also rejecting sharing raw interview data and participant identities; an internal evaluation of a small project team’s efficacy, where the evaluator had to balance the issue of protecting the anonymity of team members sharing specific stories that could easily be identified with communicating consistent issues that needed to be resolved within the team; an internal evaluation of a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion professional learning opportunity, critical feedback from a small number of individuals of color needed to be reported while maintaining confidentiality; a mixed-method evaluation of sex education programs that serve traditionally marginalized groups, where protocols were designed to collect sensitive data from youth, and results had to be reported in a way that protected the identities of students and schools, while also taking into account the political landscape and impact of data sharing and dissemination for these groups; and a large-scale quantitative evaluation using Medicaid data, where a priori research questions resulted in small groups of participants per analysis cell, thus requiring careful consideration when analyzing and reporting findings so individuals and their health data were not identifiable. Post-presentation discussions between participants and the audience will focus on ethical considerations such as consent procedures, sharing data, protecting confidentiality, and the misuse or misrepresentation of evaluation findings. These discussions will also include how relationships between evaluators, stakeholders, and participants are impacted when these issues arise. Audience members will be encouraged to consider what the role of an evaluator is in these situations and to critically reflect on their own work and approaches to protecting anonymity while amplifying voices. Join us for this roundtable featuring evaluators from diverse backgrounds and career stages, (early to senior levels), as they share their experiences and engage in a dynamic discussion. This session aims to identify best practices for amplifying voices while ensuring anonymity. We especially encourage early career evaluators to attend, as they will gain valuable insights and practical applications for their work whether it be large-scale quantitative, or smaller qualitative-based projects.