Data Display and Disclosure Risk

Barbara Entwisle, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

At what scale can geographic locations associated with social survey respondents be displayed on maps? Threats to disclosure depend, in part, on the scale of the presentation. This issue will be discussed with specific reference to the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. Add Health began as a highly clustered school-based design. Information that might identify schools and tie respondents to them is a security threat. Thus, for Add Health, it important to know at what scale of presentation particular schools risk being identified. This risk will be estimated based on the degree of error associated with different scales of presentation relative to the distribution of sampling units, i.e., schools. Of particular interest is regional variability. Threats to data security at a given scale will be greater for rural areas, where schools are more dispersed, than for suburban and urban areas.