Confidentiality Review

Following an initial assessment of materials submitted, DSDR staff review all data and documentation for the presence of confidential information. We strongly recommend that data producers remove all respondent identifiers prior to deposit of their public-use data collections. Responsible archiving practice demands that ICPSR not release any information that could, on its own or in combination with external data sources, be used to identify respondents. Toward this end:

• Direct identifiers (e.g. names, addresses) are always deleted from data files.

• Indirect identifiers that may be used in conjunction with respondent attitudes and other publicly-available information (e.g. geographic locations) to identify individual respondents are also identified. Steps are taken to remedy the threat of disclosure.

• Examples of recoding efforts taken to eliminate indirect identifiers include converting dates to time intervals, exact dates of birth to age groups, state of residence to regional codes, and income to income ranges or categories.

• DSDR staff work closely with data depositors to resolve confidentiality issues, since they are most familiar with the data and in some cases, the alteration of data for this purpose reduces the amount of information available for analysis. However, the best solution is for the data depositor to determine, prior to depositing data with DSDR, whether the confidentiality of individuals is being preserved, and if not, to take the necessary action.