Anonymity in Behavioural Research: Not Being Unnamed, But Being Unknown
Bibliographic record
Abstract
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES should help answer a crucial question: how does anonymity influence behaviour? A quick perusal of the literature, however, reveals that the answer provided by this research is far from simple. According to the empirical literature, “anonymity” has broad, varied, and inconsistent behavioural effects. A deeper reading reveals that the complexity of behavioural effects is matched by the complexity and variety in the empirical definitions of “anonymity.” Analysis of empirical manipulations designed to operationalize the concept reveal that they reflect three distinct concepts: 1) identity protection (withholding of name or other unique identifiers); 2) visual anonymity (being unseen by communication partners); and 3) action anonymity (where the content and even existence of actions are unavailable to others). The first of these manipulations closely matches the traditional definition of anonymity, while the second and third relate more to being known (visually or by one’s actions) than to being identified. Thus, in the context of behavioural research, anonymity is defined in two intertwined ways: as lacking unique identifiers and as being hidden from public scrutiny. LA RECHERCHE EMPIRIQUE EN SCIENCES SOCIALES devrait aider à répondre à une question clé : quel est l’effet de l’anonymat sur le comportement? Un bref survol de la documentation révèle, toutefois, que la réponse qui se dégage de ces recherches n’est guère simple : les effets de l’anonymat sont nombreux, variés et incohérents. Une lecture plus attentive révèle que la complexité des effets de l’anonymat sur le comportement est comparable à la complexité et à la diversité des définitions empiriques du terme « anonymat ». L’analyse des manipulations empiriques visant à en opérationnaliser le contenu démontre qu’il existe trois concepts distincts : 1) la protection de l’identité (la dissimulation du nom ou d’autres identificateurs uniques); 2) l’anonymat visuel (la préservation de l’invisibilité aux yeux des partenaires en communication); et 3) l’anonymat des actes (la dissimulation aux autres à la fois du contenu des actes et des actes mêmes). La première de ces manipulations correspond à peu près à la notion traditionnelle de l’anonymat. La seconde et la troisième ont trait davantage à la connaissance de l’individu (visuellement ou par ses actes) qu’à son identification. Par conséquent, dans le contexte de la recherche sur le comportement, l’anonymat comporte deux définitions entrelacées : l’absence d’identificateurs uniques et la protection du soi contre l’examen public.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.104 | 0.238 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.069 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.020 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".