Helgesson Gert
Stockholm Centre for Healthcare Ethics (CHE), Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics (LIME), Karolinska Institutet, 171 77, Stockholm, Sweden,
Med Health Care Philos. 2015 Feb;18(1):149-52. doi: 10.1007/s11019-014-9579-4.
Providing proper protection of confidentiality, by preventing personal data from falling into the hands of third parties, is one of the core responsibilities of researchers towards research participants. However, even if researchers do their best in this regard, it does not guarantee that breaches of confidentiality will be avoided. This paper addresses the case of small qualitative studies, arguing that researchers cannot guarantee their informants' confidentiality, since that confidentiality may be compromised by actions taken by the informants themselves. In order to reduce the risk of this specific threat to confidentiality, additional precautions need to be taken. Some potential solutions to the problem are suggested and discussed.
通过防止个人数据落入第三方手中来提供适当的保密保护，是研究人员对研究参与者的核心责任之一。然而，即使研究人员在这方面尽了最大努力，也不能保证避免保密性的泄露。本文探讨了小型定性研究的情况，认为研究人员无法保证其受访者的保密性，因为这种保密性可能会因受访者自身采取的行动而受到损害。为了降低这种对保密性的特定威胁的风险，需要采取额外的预防措施。文中提出并讨论了该问题的一些潜在解决方案。
