This article discusses the issue of confidentiality in clinical nursing research. Various perspectives on maintaining participant privacy while conforming to legal mandates to report child abuse, threats of homicide & suicide attempts are discussed. The role of confidentiality certificates in providing legal immunity for researchers & the method of obtaining these certificates are presented. The article also articulates that full disclosure of confidentiality limits to abused people may result in diminished recruitment for research purposes. (15 refs) (SC)