Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 4 (2011), 455–459. Copyright  2011 Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. 1754-9426/11 Revisiting the Great Survey Debate: Aren’t We Past That Yet? ALLAN H. CHURCH AND CHRISTOPHER T. ROTOLO PepsiCo, Inc. Employee surveys are one of the most important tools that industrial – organiza- tional (I–O) psychologists, human resource professionals, and organization develop- ment (OD) practitioners have for commu- nicating, measuring, and driving change efforts in organizational settings. As many practitioners have noted (e.g., Burke, Coruzzi, & Church, 1996; Church & Waclawski, 2001; Falletta & Combs, 2002; Kraut, 2006) surveys have taken on a decid- edly more strategic and long-term emphasis. This trend has considerable implications for how surveys are designed and adminis- tered in organizational settings going for- ward, including the role of what Saari and Scherbaum (2011) term ‘‘identified’’ (or what we would label as confidential) sur- vey approaches versus those that are strictly anonymous in nature. In short, Saari and Scherbaum appear to be raising, or perhaps more appropriately from our perspective revisiting, the age-old debate among sur- vey practitioners regarding whether (and when) confidential or anonymous surveys are (or should be) the preferred method for collecting employee responses. The purpose of this commentary is to provide a counter point of view and recommendation to that of Saari and Scherbaum’s regarding the use of identified surveys in organizational settings, that is, Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Allan H. Church. E-mail: allan.church@pepsico.com Address: PepsiCo, Inc., 700 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577 that the preferred method of surveying should be identified or confidential, not anonymous in nature. Our comments fall into two distinct categories: (a) those relating to the practice of conducting identified (or confidential) versus truly anonymous employee surveys and (b) those regarding the management of expectations on the part of both the respondents and those championing (or subsidizing the cost of) employee survey efforts. Each of these is described in more detail below. Transparency of Purpose and Data Although we agree with Saari and Scherbaum on several of their points (e.g., ensuring clarity of purpose and use of the data to employees and clearly communi- cating the type of data being collected), we disagree with their recommendation that unless absolutely necessary (i.e., for longi- tudinal linkage research aimed specifically at the individual level of analysis), prac- titioners should not use identified surveys as their administration method of choice. The authors appropriately cite the issues of trust, data misuse, response behavior, and retaliation as potential negative outcomes associated with widespread use of identified or confidential surveys. Although we respect their position and agree that these are indeed issues of which the practitioner must be cognizant, from our perspective, we would argue that using identified surveys whenever possible is the preferable method of administration (of 455