Perceived Anonymity Adequacy 19
evaluating my supervisor] because we have an unusually good rapport and even the constructive
criticisms I included were things he'd heard from me before.” In both of these examples, a
positive working environment seemed to facilitate less of a need for anonymity, and as a result,
an adequate level of anonymity may have been easier to attain.
In contrast with the previous results, the relationships between anonymity adequacy and
each of the four factors were not significant during evaluations of coworkers. One explanation
for these findings is that the potential implications associated with evaluating a coworker are not
as severe as when evaluating a supervisor, and as a result, raters may not be as concerned with
their degree of anonymity. Indeed, participants felt a significantly smaller degree of anonymity
inadequacy when evaluating co-workers then when evaluating superiors. Additionally,
participants listed more specific reasons, focused on avoiding negative consequences, for
concealing identity information when evaluating a supervisor. Participants reported withholding
identity information while rating a supervisor “in order to maintain harmony,” because he/she
“didn’t want to jeopardize other people,” “to protect [an] employee’s privacy/job security,” and
simply for “fear of retribution.” These types of reasons for concealing identity information were
not evident for coworker evaluations.
Identity Information Concealed
Across evaluations of supervisors and coworkers combined, 115 of 161 participants
indicated concealing at least one type of identity information. Participants most frequently
reported intentionally leaving off the names of others during performance evaluations. Names
were omitted almost 50% more than the next type of identity information. Marx (1999) offers
one explanation for this finding in noting that names are “the kind of little detail in which big
social meanings may reside” (p. 101). Names are the most accessible the type of identity
information and the most intrinsically linked to one’s identity. After the names of other people,
Convention