Confidentiality challenges in releasing longitudinally linked data

Mitra, Robin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9584-8044, Blanchard, Stephanie, Dove, Iain, Tudor, Caroline and Spicer, Keith 2020. Confidentiality challenges in releasing longitudinally linked data. Transactions on Data Privacy 13 (2) , pp. 151-170.

PDF - Published Version Download (1MB)

Abstract

Longitudinally linked household data allows researchers to analyse trends over time as well as on a cross-sectional level. Such analysis requires households to be linked across waves, but this increases the possibility of disclosure risks. We focus on an inter-wave disclosure risk specific to such data sets where intruders can make use of intimate knowledge gained about the household in one wave to learn new sensitive information about the household in future waves. We consider a specific way this risk could occur when households split in one wave, so an individual has left the household, and illustrate this risk using the Wealth and Assets survey. We also show that simply removing the links between waves may be insufficient to adequately protect confidentiality. To mitigate this risk we investigate two statistical disclosure control methods, perturbation and synthesis, that alter sensitive information on these households in the current wave. In this way no new sensitive information will be disclosed to these individuals, while utility should be largely preserved provided the SDC measures are applied appropriately. © 2020, University of Skovde. All rights reserved.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
Schools:	Mathematics
Publisher:	IIIA-CSIC
ISSN:	1888-5063
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	11 January 2022
Last Modified:	17 Jun 2023 03:25
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/146471

Citation Data

Cited 3 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item