Privacy Protective Research: Facilitating Ethically Responsible Access to Administrative Data

Daniel Goroff, Jules Polonetsky and Omer Tene

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2018, vol. 675, issue 1, 46-66

Abstract: Companies and government entities collect substantial amounts of administrative data through the Internet; mobile communications; and a vast infrastructure of devices and sensors embedded in healthcare facilities, retail outlets, public transportation, social networks, workplaces, and homes. They use administrative data to test new products and services, improve existing offerings, conduct research, and foster innovation. However, the lack of a clear legal framework and ethical guidelines for use of administrative data jeopardizes the value of important research. Concerns over legal impediments and ethical restrictions threaten to diminish productive collaboration between researchers and private sector businesses. This article provides strategies for organizations to minimize risks of reidentification and privacy violations for individual data subjects. In addition, it suggests that privacy and ethical concerns would best be managed by supporting the development of administrative data centers to lower transaction costs and increase the reproducibility of research conducted on administrative data.

Keywords: administrative data; data research; data protection; big data; privacy; ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716217742605 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:675:y:2018:i:1:p:46-66

DOI: 10.1177/0002716217742605

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().