Pseudonymization in a dataset means that personal identifiers such as name and email address have been removed, and instead individual records use an “alias” or pseudonym (such as a randomly assigned string of 8 characters). Pseudonymization is sometimes used in longitudinal studies where people are participating in a series of surveys over time; their records can be appended with new survey responses, but without using personal identifiers. Thus, when researchers are analyzing the data, they don’t know whose responses they are analyzing. Unlike anonymization, pseudonymization can be reversed.
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