Identified Employee Surveys: Potential Promise, Perils, and Professional Practice Guidelines

Over the years, employee opinion surveys have evolved in their use and how they are conducted. A major advancement has been the use of linkage analyses, whereby employee attitudes at a unit level are statistically related to other important organizational outcomes. A more recent development has been linkage analyses at the individual level and over time. In order to carry out these types of analyses, “identified surveys” must be used—surveys that retain identifying information on each survey respondent in order to link with other individual-level variables over time. The purpose of this article is to open up a discussion on identified surveys, describe under what circumstances they may be uniquely beneficial, and highlight potential concerns with them. We close with proposed guidelines for professional practice and recommend that our profession have a point of view on identified surveys for ourselves and to advise others.