Tripod Project Confidentiality

The Tripod Project protects the identities of students and teachers who respond on their surveys and maintains the confidentiality of the information they receive from students and teachers. Built-in privacy and security measures prevent surveys from being used to single out or to evaluate any student or any teachers.

The project accomplishes this in the following ways:

Process

• Only numbers are sent to the Tripod Project. Names are not sent. The Tripod Project cannot link names and numbers.
• When the Project provides survey data back to the school, it does not include identification numbers of any teacher or students.
• Only the classroom teacher will have access to the classroom summary from any particular classroom. These classroom-level reports protect the identity of individual students and are only sent when at least five students complete the survey.
• The superintendent and the building principals must sign statements stipulating that they agree with the Project's privacy conditions before the survey will be administered.

Confidentiality Statements

• The superintendent and building principals are required to sign a confidentiality statement before the survey is given. That statement has each administrator certify that he/she "will neither examine nor seek to learn the survey responses of any teacher or student. Neither will I use survey findings to evaluate the job performance of any teacher nor penalize any teacher who declines to have his or her classroom participate in the survey project. Every student will have the option not to participate, without penalty."
• The teachers giving the survey also sign a confidentiality agreement. That agreement states to the signing teacher that "no one other than you will be given survey results that can be linking to your classroom(s). In order to receive a classroom summary of survey results after the end of the school year, you will have to supply the three-digit classroom number, your four-digit PIN, and the three-digit school number."
• Teachers also agree on their confidentiality statement "not to examine or seek to learn the survey responses of any student."