Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Sep:6344:74-84.
doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-15838-4_7.

IPUMS-International Statistical Disclosure Controls: 159 Census Microdata Samples in Dissemination, 100+ in Preparation

Robert McCaa  1 , Steven Ruggles  1 , Matt Sobek  1
Affiliations

IPUMS-International Statistical Disclosure Controls: 159 Census Microdata Samples in Dissemination, 100+ in Preparation

Robert McCaa et al. Priv Stat Databases. 2010 Sep.

Abstract

In the last decade, a revolution has occurred in access to census microdata for social and behavioral research. More than 325 million person records (55 countries, 159 samples) representing two-thirds of the world's population are now readily available to bona fide researchers from the IPUMS-International website: www.ipums.org/international hosted by the Minnesota Population Center. Confidentialized extracts are disseminated on a restricted access basis at no cost to bona fide researchers. Over the next five years, from the microdata already entrusted by National Statistical Office-owners, the database will encompass more than 80 percent of the world's population (85 countries, ~100 additional datasets) with priority given to samples from the 2010 round of censuses. A profile of the most frequently used samples and variables is described from 64,248 requests for microdata extracts. The development of privacy protection standards by National Statistical Offices, international organizations and academic experts is fundamental to eliciting world-wide cooperation and, thus, to the success of the IPUMS initiative. This paper summarizes the legal, administrative and technical underpinnings of the project, including statistical disclosure controls, as well as the conclusions of a lengthy on-site review by the former Australian Statistician, Mr. Dennis Trewin.

Keywords: Census microdata samples; IPUMS-International; data dissemination; data privacy.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The IPUMS-International World Map
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. McCaa R, Ruggles S, Davern M, Swenson T, Mohan Palipudi K. IPUMS-International High Precision Population Census Microdata Samples: Balancing the Privacy-Quality Tradeoff by Means of Restricted Access Extracts. In: Domingo-Ferrer J, Franconi L, editors. PSD 2006. LNCS. Vol. 4302. Heidelberg: Springer; 2006. pp. 375–382. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Museux J-M, Peeters M, Santos M-J. Legal, Political and Methodological Issues in Confidentiality in the European Statistical System. In: Domingo-Ferrer J, Saygın Y, editors. PSD 2008. LNCS. Vol. 5262. Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. pp. 324–334.
    1. McCaa R, Esteve A. Monographs of official statistics: Work session on statistical data confidentiality. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities; 2006. IPUMS-Europe: Confidentiality measures for licensing and disseminating restricted-access census microdata extracts to academic users; pp. 37–46.
    1. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Conference of European Statisticians. Managing Statistical Confidentiality & Microdata Access: Principles and Guidelines of Good Practice. Geneva: United Nations; 2007. http://www.unece.org/stats/publications/Managing.statistical.confidentia....
    1. United Kingdom. Office of National Statistics. National Statistics Code of Practice Protocol on Data Access and Confidentiality. London: HMSO; 2004.

LinkOut - more resources