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Anonymous or named — which survey should you run?
Anonymity changes what people tell you and what you can do about it. A short guide to picking the right mode before you send the link.
Anonymity is not a privacy setting you toggle at the end. It changes which answers you get, so it belongs in the decision you make before writing the first question.
When anonymous wins
Anonymous responses are worth it whenever the honest answer could cost the respondent something: feedback about a manager, admitting a process is not being followed, rating a colleague's work.
The trade-off is real, though. You cannot follow up, you cannot de-duplicate reliably, and you cannot exclude someone who answered forty times.
When named wins
Name the respondents when the follow-up matters more than the candour: bug reports you will need to reproduce, feature requests you will want to clarify, anything where "who" changes what you do next.
Named surveys also let you close the loop, and telling people what changed because of their answer is the single most effective way to get a second response later.
The mode in between
A survey that is anonymous to the *audience* but attributable to *you* is often the honest middle ground — useful for team retrospectives where results are shared openly but individual answers are not.
Whatever you pick, put it in writing above the first question. Undisclosed attribution is the fastest way to lose a respondent permanently.