Hi -
An "anonymous" questionnaire is not "truly" anonymous. There are data tracks that can allow someone with access to the database to determine who responded. However, an anonymous questionnaire will not reveal who submitted the response through any of the standard UI elements. So, a teacher in a course cannot see who the respondents are if they are reviewing the responses. And, if a questionnaire has been set to "anonymous", and responses have been submitted, it cannot be set to be "not anonymous".
Information identifying the respondent with the response is still stored in the database. This allows an anonymous questionnaire to still allow "one response per user" for example. Data still exists, identifying the user in the "questionnaire_attempts" and "questionnaire_response" tables as well as the Moodle logs. But, you would need to access the database via mechanisms other than the questionnaire UI to extract that information.
I have created issue CONTRIB-6135 to discuss the possible need for more anonymity.
Moodle does not assure any anonymity and it is a good idea if people assume that nothing on the internet or web is truly anonymous from someone who really wants to track them. You might get "more anonymity" from one set of code than another (e.g. where it did not require a user to be logged in), but in the final analysis you will not be entirely anonymous. Read through what Mike has written and his links for more information as I noticed he is the Questionnaire maintainer, so knows what he is talking about.
Hi Astrid,
Good point. Mike and Marcus are spot on. As your IT student probably knows, not much is truly hidden from everybody when it comes to a internet/intranet traffic or the interaction between a browser and a program like Moodle.
I would be cautious as an expert researcher because there are no guarantees that a specific student actually filled out a specific questionnaire. Only that someone apparently filled it out with a specific user id.
The world is filled with potential uncertainties
Chris
I always thought the idea was more about being anonymous from other users/students (and not necessarily from the teacher). But you do bring up an interesting point.
Well, in the case of questionnaire, the "anonymous" option is intended to prevent anyone from seeing who submitted the questionnaire, including teachers. It prevents any user identifiers from being displayed in the questionnaire UI anywhere. But, there are still ways for a suitably privileged and motivated user to identify what submission goes with what user.
mike
Hi,
I've got the reverse problem. I made by mistake a questionnaire anonymous and I want to get user info back. How I should query the database to manually obtain the user of each response?
Hi, I have found a big problem about anonymity. The problem is the report of the answers: the answers are collected in alphabetical order, so if I analyze the final report, I can easily know that the first answer corresponds to the first person in alphabetical order, the second answer corresponds to the second person, and so on. You can easily verify this by creating a simple questionnaire with a single text field and asking to the students to answer with the number corresponding to own position in alphabetical order. Then, force the students to send the answers NOT in alphabetical order, in order to simulate a "fortuity". When all students have sent the answers, in the final report you can see the answers from the first to last number, in perfect alphabetical order. In this way, I can know who wrote a specific answers. This is a big anonymity bug. It is possible to fix?
Corrado
