I want to demonstrate that the quotations come from a variety of participants to enhance credibility of the results. However, I've been advised against referring to participants as numbers (e.g., "Participant 18") because it's dehumanizing, and the privacy office has advised me against sharing any combined demographic information (e.g., "48 year old man"/"Latina woman") because all participants are involved with a site-based organization, and this could identify them.
My concern about using pseudonyms is that the research is based on a single, site-based organization. If I select pseudonyms outside of actual participant names, I could unknowingly use a name of someone who is involved with the organization. This could mislead people to believe they were in the study and negatively affect them, despite not participating in the study. Alternatively, it could disclose who did not participate in the study.
Privacy and dehumanizing both seem to be of utmost importance for your research. Given your details, I can think of a solution such that you may use a list of proper names (of colours, plants, etc.) with neutral connotations and have a low likelihood of being used as a human name or family name. This may be harder when you have a high number of participants. You can openly state your methodology of using pseudonyms, in the methods, so that nobody is disclosed accidentally.
On the other hand, I believe that not all coding and numbering is dehumanizing, especially it is useful for the anonymity of the data (privacy of the participant), which has a higher priority over the language being utilized. There can be other ways of honouring uniqueness of a participant. Compare, Participant 1 vs. Participant with code 1.
Good luck with your project.
Another way I have seen authors "name" their participants (other than making up pseudonyms or using numbers) is by using letters of the alphabet (e.g., Participant A, Participant B, etc.). I personally prefer names to numbers or letters because names feel more like 'real life' people to me, but I do understand your hesitation. The strategy I use most often is to have participants choose their own pseudonyms up front, that way I am off the hook of making up names later and I feel good about the pseudonyms reflecting something (albeit not identifying) about the participants themselves.
Heather - good responses from Cinar and Galina. You definitely have options - in line with your current process and outside of it. Pseudonyms are not dehumanising. They are often a necessity in qualitative research to maintain ethics-approved privacy. For me - demographic information is not required - unless you are comparing groups i.e. focus groups - but that is not common in qualitative research. Ensure that you do not specifically specify the nature and location of the site as well.
Thank you Çınar Kaya and Galina A. Portnoy for the alternate suggestions for how to refer to participants. I hadn't seen that before so it's very helpful to know it's standard practice. It certainly would have been ideal to have participants choose a pseudonym prior to data analysis, so I will suggest that for our next project.
Thank you Dean Whitehead for affirming those answers. The nature and impact of the organization's work is the focus of the research, which is why we need to take extra care to protect participant confidentiality, and yes, the location as well.
I have seen "informants" ; you can use a few or several informants but less than normally distributed (= < 30) or a satisfactory number of informant or for the research purpose appropriate but confidentially concealed number of informants and so on.
I agree with you that the use of numbers to refer to people is inhuman, and that not referring to an explicit name is necessary in such studies, you can use the educational level of the participants to give a closer picture of the sobriety of what you do from surveys.
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