Federal Regulations SBE Practice Test 2026 – Complete Prep Resource

Protecting participants’ privacy is essential in social and behavioral research. Removing direct identifiers from the data as soon as possible is a key safeguard because it lowers the risk that someone could be identified from the dataset, even when other information is available. De-identification helps maintain confidentiality as data are collected, analyzed, or shared, making it harder to connect information to a specific individual.

The other options don’t serve the same privacy purpose: requiring longer interviews adds burden without reducing identifiability; increasing sample sizes doesn’t address confidentiality risks; publishing full datasets would actually raise privacy risk by exposing more identifiable information.