You are always anonymous when using &frankly! We believe anonymity is essential to get the frankest answers and most valuable insights. Your employer defines the number of answers required to get an aggregated result (however it can never be set to lower than 3).
Anonymity and integrity framework
To ensure that all answers are anonymous, we use a number of methods. The most basic method that we employ is requiring a minimum number of answers before we show a given result. For any result that we produce, the system counts the number of collected answers, and if it is below the required minimum, the result won't be shown for the selected group.
We provide two such minimum thresholds in &frankly: one for average answers (e.g. where an average has been produced), and one for the spread (e.g. where we show many individual answers in a graph to illustrate how scattered results are). The minimum limit is 3 but can be customizable by your organization.
Illustration showing the average results and the spread.
Only administrators in &frankly can see and edit this threshold. In order to change the limit, please follow the instructions found in this article: Anonymity threshold
The second method that is used to ensure anonymity is an integrity framework, which looks at possible situations of isolation of individual answers in the organizational structure and/or by the attributes (such as location, age, gender) defined in your account in &frankly. The results are restricted to be shown when there are identified isolation cases. Our integrity framework makes sure that no groups can be compared in cases where an individual answer would be possible to expose.
In order to address this possible case of individual answer isolation, &frankly looks at all possible differences in the current organizational structure, as well as all combinations of attributes and discrete attribute ranges to identify if there are potential isolation cases where an individual may be possible to isolate out. The integrity framework requires that a group has at least 3 (or more) unique answers. This means that the difference between two almost identical groups needs to be 3 answers.
When such a case is identified, the case is resolved by granting visibility only to the largest group result and restricting visibility to results of the smaller group.
Integrity framework explained with an example:
Imagine that you have two groups, A and B. Group A has four users and group B has three users. The three users that are members of group B are also members of group A.
If all four members would answer, the difference in the number of answers between these two groups would only be one (1). If the results would be visible for both groups, you could theoretically compare the results and figure out what the single user that doesn't exist in both groups answered. To prevent this, the system would hide the results for one of the groups (the one with fewer answers).
In order to see results for all groups and/or segments, they all need to pass the anonymity limit and have at least three unique answers.
If you need more information or have any further questions regarding this, please contact us at help@andfrankly.com