Statistical disclosure limitation is widely used by data collecting institutions to provide safe individual data. However, the choice of the disclosure limitation method severely affects the quality of the data. In particular, estimators for nonlinear models based on data which are masked by standard disclosure limitation techniques such as blanking or noise addition lead to inconsistent parame...

Publishing individual specific microdata has serious privacy implications. The k-anonymity model has been proposed to prevent identity disclosure from microdata, and the work on -diversity and t-closeness attempt to address attribute disclosure. However, most current work only deal with publishing microdata with a single sensitive attribute (SA), whereas real life scenarios often involve microd...

Public disclosure of information about the quality of health plans, hospitals, and doctors continues to be controversial. The US experience of the past decade suggests that sophisticated quality measures and reporting systems that disclose information on quality have improved the process and outcomes of care in limited ways in some settings, but these efforts have not led to the "consumer choic...

We investigate whether corporations are following the “best disclosure practices” when presenting business reports on their Web sites. As a benchmark, we use the recommendations made by the Jenkins Committee (1994) to improve corporate reporting practices, to evaluate reports presented on corporate Web sites for their value, relevance, and quality of information. We compute a disclosure score u...

This paper presents a decision-theoretic approach to data disclosure problems. The approach is innovative because (i) it offers a theoretical framework to develop optimality criteria for the choice of the best form of data release, (ii) it recognizes the different perspectives of the statistical agency and of the users of the data in assessing the extent of disclosure and the quality of the use...

External mandates for medical error disclosure are often justified by potential cost savings, the belief in individual moral obligations in health care, and the concept that patients have rights and providers have responsibilities. Such an approach does not recognise the systems nature of error and outcomes and the important quality role disclosure can play in a system of medical error disclosu...

OBJECTIVE This study is the first phase of a two-phase study aimed at exploring the perspectives of consumers with schizophrenia regarding quality of life and developing a quality-of-life assessment that addresses factors experienced as important by consumers. METHOD Focus groups were used to explore the perspectives of 35 persons with schizophrenia regarding the meaning of quality of life an...

Firms communicate product quality to consumers through a variety of channels. Economic models of such communication take two alternative forms when quality is exogenous: 1) disclosure of quality through a credible direct claim; 2) signaling of quality via producer actions that influence buyers’ beliefs about quality. In general, these two literatures have ignored one-another. We argue that firm...