title: Informants a potential threat to confidentiality in small studies.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Stockholm Centre for Healthcare Ethics (CHE), Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics (LIME), Karolinska Institutet, 171 77, Stockholm, Sweden, gert.helgesson@ki.se.
authors.forename: Gert
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Helgesson
mesh_terms: D003219:Confidentiality / Q000941:ethics*; D032984:Ethics, Research; D006801:Humans