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So, has anyone here had career repercussions from anonymous surveys?

I have been rewarded probably more than I deserved because of high scores on anonymous teaching surveys when I was a professor. Conversely, I know professors whose careers suffered because they did not get high ratings.

Was I a more effective teacher? Almost certainly not. It was a difference in personality style or academic subject or even the choice of the exact day to hand out the survey forms or how particular individuals felt about the survey process itself.

Yet people's salaries, rank, and even careers were decided largely on collection of anonymous opinion. It was one of the big turn-offs that had me switching careers, even though I won at that game. I absolutely loathed those damn surveys that tried to be both teaching improvement instrument and consumer data. From often tiny and incomplete class samples and without throwing out the outliers or insisting on minimum samples, the administration drew sweeping statistical b.s.

In case you're curious, the only helpful student teaching evaluation forms that help professors don't even exist much anymore. They are the open-ended questions. They don't exist much anymore because of the internet; those answers have sometimes been posted out of context or incompletely.

And so, in conclusion, blech on this kind of data collection and any career consequences.