Attachment N - American Assoc. for Public Opinion Research Guidelines

ATTACHMENT N – AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH GUIDELINES

The Respondent

1. The use of practices or methods that may harm, humiliate, or seriously mislead survey respondents will be avoided.

2. Unless the respondent waives confidentiality for specified uses, all information that might identify a respondent with his or her responses will be held as privileged and confidential. The names of respondents will not be disclosed or used for nonresearch purposes unless the respondents grant us permission to do so.

Pledges of confidentiality given to respondents will be carefully developed and fulfilled.

Clear intentions and meticulous procedures to ensure the privacy of respondents and the confidentiality of the information they provide will be established. Unless the respondent explicitly requests otherwise, or waives confidentiality for specified uses, the identity of individual respondents and all information that might identify a respondent with his or her responses will be held as privileged and confidential.

Exemplary survey research practice requires that one do whatever is possible to protect the privacy of research participants and to keep collected information they provide confidential or anonymous. One must establish clear intentions to protect the confidentiality of information collected from respondents, strive to ensure that these intentions realistically reflect one’s ability to do so, and clearly state pledges of confidentiality and their realistic limitations to respondents. That is, one must ensure that the means are adequate to protect confidentiality to the extent pledged or intended, that procedures for processing and use of data conform to the pledges made, and that appropriate care is taken in dealing with directly identifying information (that is, using such steps as destroying this type of information or removing it from the file when it is no longer needed for inquiry).

Interviewers and other research staff must be carefully trained and indoctrinated to uphold and maintain the confidentiality of respondents’ identities and the information they provide and take/sign an explicit oath or pledge of confidentiality to do so before beginning work. In the verification of information, the identity of respondents must be protected from outside disclosure.

Research materials will be stored on Fleishman-Hillard’s password protected server.

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