The California Health Interview Survey: Legal, Institutional, and Statistical Methods for Data Confidentiality

• Activity Number: 21
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 3, 2003 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): M. Lee Habte*+ and E. Richard Brown and Jenny Chia and Wei Yen and Charles A. DiSogra and Hongjian Yu
• Companies: University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Los Angeles
• Keywords: confidentiality ; restricted-use data ; data access center ; disclosure review committee ; disclosure limitation ; statistics

Abstract

The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), the largest health data survey in the U.S., is a collaborative project of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, the California Department of Health Services, and the Public Health Institute. This paper will outline the legal, institutional, and statistical issues and methods employed for limiting disclosure risk in the CHIS project. It will highlight issues related to coordinating confidentiality policies and procedures among multiple project sponsors. It will describe the policies adopted and statistical methods applied to limit disclosure risk while providing data access options for communities, local health agencies, and researchers. Topics include confidentiality policy issues, development of restricted-access data agreements, operation of a data access center, and application of statistical methods.