O privacy, where art thou? Research access to restricted-use data

摘要

In last issue's column, John Abowd and Lars Vilhuber discussed the interplay between science, confidentiality, and the public good and outlined some of the data access modalities, in particular a synthetic data model implemented by the Cornell Virtual Research Data Center. In this month's column, Saki Kinney and Alan Karr from the National Institute of Statistical Sciences give details about how access is operationalized and offer practical guidelines and considerations for researchers seeking access to confidential data from government agencies.