Disclosure Journal

This book on statistical disclosure control presents the theory, applications and software implementation of the traditional approach to (micro)data anonymization, including data perturbation methods, disclosure risk, data utility, information loss and methods for simulating synthetic data. Introducing readers to the R packages sdcMicro and simPop, the book also features numerous examples and exercises with solutions, as well as case studies with real-world data, accompanied by the underlying R code to allow readers to reproduce all results. The demand for and volume of data from surveys, registers or other sources containing sensible information on persons or enterprises have increased significantly over the last several years. At the same time, privacy protection principles and regulations have imposed restrictions on the access and use of individual data. Proper and secure microdata dissemination calls for the application of statistical disclosure control methods to the da ta before release. This book is intended for practitioners at statistical agencies and other national and international organizations that deal with confidential data. It will also be interesting for researchers working in statistical disclosure control and the health sciences.

The aim of this book is to give the reader a detailed introduction to the different approaches to generating multiply imputed synthetic datasets. It describes all approaches that have been developed so far, provides a brief history of synthetic datasets, and gives useful hints on how to deal with real data problems like nonresponse, skip patterns, or logical constraints. Each chapter is dedicated to one approach, first describing the general concept followed by a detailed application to a real dataset providing useful guidelines on how to implement the theory in practice. The discussed multiple imputation approaches include imputation for nonresponse, generating fully synthetic datasets, generating partially synthetic datasets, generating synthetic datasets when the original data is subject to nonresponse, and a two-stage imputation approach that helps to better address the omnipresent trade-off between analytical validity and the risk of disclosure. The book concludes with a glimpse into the future of synthetic datasets, discussing the potential benefits and possible obstacles of the approach and ways to address the concerns of data users and their understandable discomfort with using data that doesn’t consist only of the originally collected values. The book is intended for researchers and practitioners alike. It helps the researcher to find the state of the art in synthetic data summarized in one book with full reference to all relevant papers on the topic. But it is also useful for the practitioner at the statistical agency who is considering the synthetic data approach for data dissemination in the future and wants to get familiar with the topic.

Statistical disclosure control is the discipline that deals with producing statistical data that are safe enough to be released to external researchers. This book concentrates on the methodology of the area. It deals with both microdata (individual data) and tabular (aggregated) data. The book attempts to develop the theory from what can be called the paradigm of statistical confidentiality: to modify unsafe data in such a way that safe (enough) data emerge, with minimum information loss. This book discusses what safe data, are, how information loss can be measured, and how to modify the data in a (near) optimal way. Once it has been decided how to measure safety and information loss, the production of safe data from unsafe data is often a matter of solving an optimization problem. Several such problems are discussed in the book, and most of them turn out to be hard problems that can be solved only approximately. The authors present new results that have not been published before. The book is not a description of an area that is closed, but, on the contrary, one that still has many spots awaiting to be more fully explored. Some of these are indicated in the book. The book will be useful for official, social and medical statisticians and others who are involved in releasing personal or business data for statistical use. Operations researchers may be interested in the optimization problems involved, particularly for the challenges they present. Leon Willenborg has worked at the Department of Statistical Methods at Statistics Netherlands since 1983, first as a researcher and since 1989 as a senior researcher. Since 1989 his main field of research and consultancy has been statistical disclosure control. From 1996-1998 he was the project coordinator of the EU co-funded SDC project.

The increasingly crucial role of companies’ non-financial disclosure (NFD) and integrated reporting (IR) has led to a lively debate among academics, practitioners, and regulators on the approaches, framework, contents, principles, and standards that should oversee these forms of reporting. Through several expert contributions, conducted both with qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this book provides an up-to-date portrait of the debate by exploring corporate NFD either in its mandated contents or voluntary information. Contributing authors provide studies that encompass the different lines of NFD, namely non-financial risk reporting, sustainability reporting, and intellectual capital reporting, as well as the integration of financial and non-financial information through IR, the assurance of the NFD and IR through auditing activities, and the role of management and CFOs in NFD and IR.

Decisions about self-disclosure-whether to reveal one's thoughts, feel ings, or past experiences to another person, or the level of intimacy of such disclosure-are part of the everyday life of most persons. The nature of the decisions that a person makes will have an impact on his or her life. They will determine the kinds of relationships the person has with others; how others perceive him or her; and the degree of self knowledge and awareness that the person possesses. The study of self-disclosure has interested specialists from many disciplines, including personality and social psychologists, clinical and counseling psychologists, and communications researchers. Our book brings together the work of experts from these various disciplines with the hope that knowledge about work being done on self-disclosure in related disciplines will be increased. A strong emphasis in each of the chapters is theory development and the integration of ideas about self-disclosure. The book's chapters explore three major areas, including the interrelationship of self-disclosure and personality as well as the role of self-disclosure in the development, maintenance, and deterioration of personal relationships, and the con tribution of self-disclosure to psychotherapy, marital therapy, and counseling.

This book provides a description of the state of the art on environmental disclosure, illustrating the key theoretical issues, the regulatory frameworks, the main standards developed and reporting the results of an empirical analysis on the environmental disclosure released by listed firms. Luigi Lepore and Sabrina Pisano begin by analysing the origin and evolution of environmental disclosure. They go on to provide a description of the main theoretical frameworks used by scholars, explaining the conceptual basis of each theory and describing how the specific theory has been used to explain the company’s decision to release environmental disclosure. The second part of the book highlights the role and evolution of the European regulatory frameworks, emphasizing the transition from voluntary to mandatory disclosure. The book ends by providing a picture of the evolution of sustainability reporting practices in European Union nations over the past two decades. This book investigates the critical issues and new directions in environmental disclosure, which are currently under examination by regulators and standard setters. It will therefore be of great interest to academics and students working in the areas of business and sustainability.

This book analyses the use of qualitative and quantitative content analysis methodologies for risk disclosure practices in the European banking industry. While doing so, it assesses the level of transparency of financial and non-financial reports by focusing on the information disclosed to the public with reference to risk exposure and management. By drawing upon both qualitative and quantitative techniques, the book proposes two different methodological approaches to assess the information European financial institutions provide to the public with reference to the risk disclosure and derivative disclosure in their annual financial reports. These methodologies are subsequently employed to carry out empirical analyses on samples of European banks. By exploiting the points of strength of both qualitative and quantitative content analysis methodologies, this book offers insights into the advantages and disadvantages of these methodologies. The book is a must-read for academics and researchers that analyze disclosure practices of financial and non-financial firms, as well as financial analysts and other practitioners that are interested in assessing the level of transparency and evaluating the disclosures of financial and non-financial firms, especially, but not exclusively, with reference to risk disclosure and derivative disclosure.