Managing Confidential Information in Research

This is a site to accompany my short course on managing confidential information in research:

[Lecture Slides]
[One Page Handout for Staff]
[Summary of Preliminary Recommendations]

[Updated 11/03/2009]

Failures of confidentiality threaten research integrity, reputation, legality, and funding. Every researcher in the social, behavioral and health sciences must understand how to manage confidential information in research. Successful management of confidential information is particularly challenging because it requires satisfying a combination of complex legal, statistical and technological constants. And the management of this information has grown increasingly challenging because of recent changes in the law, new forms of data collection, and advances in statistical methods for linking data.

This tutorial provides a framework for identifying and managing confidential information in research. It is most appropriate for mid-late career graduate students, faculty, and professional research staff who actively engage in the design/planning of research. The course will provide an overview of the major legal requirements governing confidential research data; and the core technological measures used to safeguard data. And it will provide an introduction to the statistical methods and software tools used to analyze and limit disclosure risks.

Use these collections of resources and reference to help you in managing your confidential research information:

• Legal and Policy Resources for Confidential Research Information
• Disclosure Limitation Resources for Confidential Research Information

And follow these four steps...

1. Identify potentially sensitive information in planning
2. Reduce sensitivity of information in design
3. Separate sensitive information in collection
4. Protect sensitive information in collection
   • Use systems that are controlled, securely configured, and audited
   • Ensure people are authenticated, authorized, licensed
5. Review sensitive information before dissemination
   • Review disclosure risk
   Apply non-statistical disclosure limitation
   • Apply statistical disclosure limitation
   • Review past releases and publically available data
   • Check for changes in the law
   • Require a use agreement