Statistical Disclosure Control In Practice

The aim of this book is to discuss various aspects associated with disseminating personal or business data collected in censuses or surveys or copied from administrative sources. The problem is to present the data in such a form that they are useful for statistical research and to provide sufficient protection for the individuals or businesses to whom the data refer. The major part of this book is concerned with how to define the disclosure problem and how to deal with it in practical circumstances.

Because statistical confidentiality embraces the responsibility for both protecting data and ensuring its beneficial use for statistical purposes, those working with personal and proprietary data can benefit from the principles and practices this book presents. Researchers can understand why an agency holding statistical data does not respond well to the demand, “Just give me the data; I’m only going to do good things with it.” Statisticians can incorporate the requirements of statistical confidentiality into their methodologies for data collection and analysis. Data stewards, caught between those eager for data and those who worry about confidentiality, can use the tools of statistical confidentiality toward satisfying both groups. The eight chapters lay out the dilemma of data stewardship organizations (such as statistical agencies) in resolving the tension between protecting data from snoopers while providing data to legitimate users, explain disclosure risk and explore the types of attack that a data snooper might mount, present the methods of disclosure risk assessment, give techniques for statistical disclosure limitation of both tabular data and microdata, identify measures of the impact of disclosure limitation on data utility, provide restricted access methods as administrative procedures for disclosure control, and finally explore the future of statistical confidentiality.

A reference to answer all your statistical confidentiality questions. This handbook provides technical guidance on statistical disclosure control and on how to approach the problem of balancing the need to provide users with statistical outputs and the need to protect the confidentiality of respondents. Statistical disclosure control is combined with other tools such as administrative, legal and IT in order to define a proper data dissemination strategy based on a risk management approach. The key concepts of statistical disclosure control are presented, along with the methodology and software that can be used to apply various methods of statistical disclosure control. Numerous examples and guidelines are also featured to illustrate the topics covered. Statistical Disclosure Control: Presents a combination of both theoretical and practical solutions Introduces all the key concepts and definitions involved with statistical disclosure control. Provides a high level overview of how to approach problems associated with confidentiality. Provides a broad-ranging review of the methods available to control disclosure. Explains the subtleties of group disclosure control. Features examples throughout the book along with case studies demonstrating how particular methods are used. Discusses microdata, magnitude and frequency tabular data, and remote access issues. Written by experts within leading National Statistical Institutes. Official statisticians, academics and market researchers who need to be informed and make decisions on disclosure limitation will benefit from this book.

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.