Selected issues concerning disclosure avoidance in the context of user-defined geography

Abstract

The Information Age has inundated people with more statistics than ever before. The casual interest or the “need to know” demand for facts about a geographic area specific to the interests of the researcher or data gatherer create a disclosure avoidance challenge of a new dimension for data providers. The potential for finer resolution in data tabulations becomes possible with improvements in data collection tools; advances that result largely from innovations in technology combined with improved data collection procedures. The finest resolution for capturing data, that is, the spatial location of the respondent, has become a reality. Demands for more information at more precise resolutions, including spatial resolution, do not necessarily result in recognition by official statistical offices to the increased capacity made possible by new technical offerings.

The convergence of data, users, and technology has raised interesting disclosure questions and dilemmas for statistical organizations. Users increasingly compare data with geography and they oftentimes want to perform these analyses for different time periods. Changes in geography over time, availability of data for a given area only at specific points in time, and availability of data for the same geography over different time periods are examples of queries that impact data availability, data usability, and disclosure avoidance concerns.

Higher resolutions of data collection and dissemination and the potential for using data at the smallest levels of geography, raise relevant questions concerning the feasibility of meeting these demands while conforming to concerns about confidentiality. These issues are further complicated by the availability of technology such as geographic information systems (GIS) which provide tools to add, subtract, compare, and analyze geography and data in which the use of software functions raise legitimate questions about the impact of these tools on disclosure avoidance of statistical data.