How to Identify and Remediate Disclosure Risk

Abstract

Disclosure risk is the possibility of respondents or subjects being identified in data and is of concern to all people involved in collecting, analyzing, and distributing research data. As data for research includes more detailed information, disclosure risk increases.First, this course will show the importance of public-use data. Public-use data has very low disclosure risk and is often readily available for download. A public-use version of the data provides the widest access for secondary analysis.Second, the course will demonstrate how respondent confidentiality can be protected in research data. This segment will show how to assess and mitigate disclosure risk. This section will examine elements of a disclosure analysis as will disclosure protection such as statistical disclosure control. This segment will demonstrate measures commonly used to create public-use data files. Examples of public-use files created from restricted-use data, steps that can be taken early in the research process to optimize distribution options, and methods of distributing restricted-use data when public-use files cannot be created will also be covered. Examples of disclosure work from ICPSR will be used to illustrate disclosure risk and protection methods.A third segment will show how to provide access to non-public-use data. These types of data require security protections and procedures. Although these data are not public-use, summary results must be public-use if published. This segment will discuss how to review summary results such as crosstabs and regression coefficients for disclosure risk.