MATCHING ANONYMOUS PRE-POSTTESTS USING SUBJECT-GENERATED INFORMATION

Sensitive research issues call for anonymous questionnaires. This make s accurately matching pretests with posttests difficult or impossible. Various subject-generated coding schemes have been developed, but the ir accuracy has been unknown. This anonymous study, with 745 students, used subject-generated coding to match pretests with posttests. The m atching war verified for accuracy with the use of a collateral, anonym ous, sticker identification system The coding system was able to accur ately match 75.2% of all the pretest-posttest pairs. An additional 22. 1% of the pairs were left unmatched and only 2.7% were matched incorre ctly Subject-generated coding systems can be very effective where conf identiality is important to protect.