Protecting confidentiality in social science research outputs

Economists and other social scientists are increasingly relying upon confidential or restricted access data for their research. In recent years secure facilities (‘safe havens’ or ‘trusted research environments’ - TREs - such as those run by the Scottish Government, ONS, NHS-X, the UK Data Archive and others) have become vital for access to the most detailed secondary data. Researcher also collect their own data, of course, but even here the growing awareness of data protection issues are reflected in ever-higher standards.
One particular area of mystery is ‘output disclosure control’ – ensuring that research outputs do not inadvertently release confidential information. Researchers using the UK safe havens will have had basic training in statistical disclosure control, but may be unaware of the theoretical background and the processes that determine rules. Apart from safe haven training, science researchers are unlikely to have ever come across the concept, for either statistical or qualitative outputs. Breaches of good practice can be seen in academic papers, in the reports produced by academics in consultancy projects, and even in the formal outputs of government departments. The lack of awareness means that even such innocuous documents as internal university business reports can breach confidentiality.
The aim of this session is threefold. First, to show why this matters, in the context of working within good practice guidelines for research data management. Second, to consider how the current lack of awareness may be addressed, the incentives for this and the barriers to it. Third, to showcase some of the cutting-edge research, in both qualitative and quantitative data, that underpins the guidelines that social researchers are expected to work with.

The session will present four papers from economists and statisticians from the DRAGoN group at University of the West of England, who devised the training for the UK safe havens and who provide output checking for all the UK TREs. The session will be introduced and chaired by the manager of Scottish Safe Haven.