Confidentiality
The ethical and legal obligation of researchers to protect the private information provided by participants from unauthorized disclosure.
What is Confidentiality?
Confidentiality means that while the researcher knows the identity of the participants and can link them to their data, they promise not to reveal this information to anyone outside the research team. It involves implementing secure data storage, removing direct identifiers from datasets, and reporting findings in a way that prevents deductive disclosure.
Why Confidentiality Matters
It builds trust, encouraging participants to provide honest answers about sensitive topics. Breaching confidentiality can lead to significant harm to participants, including social stigma, legal trouble, or loss of employment.
Example
A researcher studying workplace dissatisfaction uses pseudonyms for all employees and their company in the final report and stores the master key linking real names to pseudonyms on an encrypted, offline hard drive.
Common Mistakes
- Confusing confidentiality with anonymity (where even the researcher does not know who the participants are).
- Failing to recognize that highly specific demographic descriptions in small samples can indirectly identify a participant (deductive disclosure).
- Storing sensitive data with identifiers on insecure cloud platforms or easily accessible personal devices.