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Why are privacy and confidentiality important for your study participants? What are some ways to maintain and ensure privacy and confidentiality?

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DB privacy and confidentiality importance for study participants

Throughout the research, you must maintain the privacy and confidentiality of your subjects. Two ethical principles, beneficence and respect, are often associated with your wish to keep your personal information private and hidden (Surmiak, 2020). Considering the potential damage in terms of social, professional, legal, and economic losses associated with a violation in this area makes obvious sense. Participating in a project or expressing an interest in participating may have negative repercussions if made public. Confidentiality and privacy are protected to safeguard the participants. This safeguards individual from psychological damage such as shame or pain, as well as social harm. Protecting your participants’ identification and personal information needs careful preparation and intentional integration into the entire design of your research (Swetha, 2019). Assume that not all participants want to discuss anonymity in complete secrecy. Individuals who participate in some studies may feel strong emotions and a sense of empowerment due to sharing their stories.

Protecting your participants’ identification and personal information needs careful preparation and intentional integration into the entire design of your research. It is essential to inform study participants about who will get the results and disseminate them (Tourangeau, 2018). Participants are the best assessors of the probability of being recognized and the resulting harm. Consequently, it’s a good idea to demonstrate how their opinions or information will be used before sharing them. Installing software on someone’s computer without their knowledge or consent while doing Internet research is a breach of their privacy (Swetha, 2019). Additionally, you must seek their consent before sharing information about their Internet browsing patterns. Investigators who use privacy, secrecy, and anonymity principles in their work must constantly balance the benefits and drawbacks of the research and the subjects.

References

Surmiak, A. (2020). Should we maintain or break confidentiality? The choices made by social researchers in the context of law violation and harm. Journal of Academic Ethics, 18(3), 229-247. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10805-019-09336-2

Swetha, M. S. (2019). CNC case study_IA2. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c192/7578a61df3c5a33f6bca9f9bd5c181e1d5ac.pdf

Tourangeau, R. (2018). Maintaining respondent trust and protecting their data. In The Palgrave Handbook of Survey Research (pp. 135-141). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-319-54395-6_18.pdf