Which describes the purpose of de-identifying data before reporting?

• A. It reduces the risk of identifying participants in published reports.
• B. It increases the risk of privacy breach.
• C. It has no effect on data sharing.
• D. It requires participants' identities to be included.

Answer: (A)

Protecting participant privacy by removing identifying information from data before reporting. De-identification means stripping out direct identifiers and any details that could link data to a person, so others cannot identify participants when reading published reports. This lowers the risk of someone recognizing who contributed the data, which is essential for ethical reporting in psychology. Because of this protection, researchers can share data and publish results with less risk to individuals. It does not involve increasing privacy breaches; it directly reduces that risk. It also enables safer data sharing, since the information released is stripped of identifiers. And it does not require identities to be included; keeping identities out is part of the purpose.