Strategies for Maintaining Privacy and Confidentiality

Abstract

As with all other elements in ethical decision-making there are tensions, conflicts and potential contradictions even in what appears at first sight to be an uncontentious area — that is, protecting the privacy of research subjects and keeping any information they provide as confidential. It is also here that the risks to a research organisation are heightened as a consequence of growing legal requirements to protect the data held on research subjects. A further complication is added in the tension between anonymity and confidentiality. They are neither mutually exclusive nor necessarily entirely congruent. In offering both anonymity and confidentiality the amount of useful data that can be disclosed might be severely limited. Moreover one might be able to retain anonymity while not treating information given as confidential; but breaches of confidentiality are also likely to undermine attempts at anonymity. This area of debate also challenges us to think more clearly about the ethical implications of the difference between the public and private spheres of social life and how concerns for privacy limit the critical insights that social research offers in democratic societies. This could mean that it might not always be in the public interest to maintain the privacy of research subjects when matters of public policy are being investigated.