GREI 5: Differential Privacy Use Case

[cmbz]

Overview

• (Chuck's DP Wizard use case)

Use Cases

• Murray Grant Study
• Harvard user study: sensitive data from a survey of ex-combatants in Colombia, HBS

[sbarbosadataverse]

Harvard User Study details:

Natalia Garbiras-Díaz, and I’m an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School. Alex Caracuzzo kindly shared your contact information with me.

I’m reaching out because I recently submitted a paper that uses sensitive data from a survey of ex-combatants in Colombia. The journal where we submitted the paper has a strict policy requiring that all data be made publicly available. However, publishing the microdata would violate the terms of our informed consent, which assured participants that their responses would be reported only in aggregate form. More importantly, making the microdata publicly accessible could potentially compromise their safety.

The compromise we reached with the journal is to upload the data to a restricted-access repository—one that requires IRB approval and allows access only through a secure server (i.e., no downloading of data). I’ve done this before for a paper published in the American Economic Review, which had an agreement with ICPSR that allowed us to follow this exact procedure.

Before reaching out to ICPSR again, I wanted to consult with you to see if this is something that could be done through Dataverse, given my Harvard affiliation. I’d be happy to provide more details or jump on a Zoom call to discuss further.

Thank you in advance, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Natalia

--
Natalia Garbiras-Díaz
Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School
www.nataliagarbirasdiaz.com