Certificates of Confidentiality Posted on March 1, 2006 Cassandra Simmel (bio) explains what certificates of confidentiality mean for researchers.

Certificates of confidentiality are available for anyone who receives federal funds for their research projects. The certificates of confidentiality protect the researcher from any of their data ever being subpoenaed. Their data is protected by federal law. Again this is one of those areas that's somewhat slippery about what does that mean about reporting what might come up in the data, so you're able to protect yourself, the researcher, from having to disclose anything that's within the data. But what about your ethical obligation to disclose something that came up? It's very slippery. To my understanding, it does not necessarily prohibit or protect researchers from their reporting obligations, so it's something to think through very carefully.

« Back to Article