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Protecting Individual Privacy in Evaluation Research (1975) / Chapter Skim
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THE NEED FOR PROTECTING INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY IN EVALUATION RESEARCH
Pages 3-7

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From page 3...
... Identification of such successful programs clearly necessitated substantial efforts to evaluate OEO-sponsored activities and, therefore, substantial interest in the problems of program evaluation. The particular incident that precipitated OEO's acute concern with confidentiality occurred during the New Jersey income maintenance project -- a major social experiment designed to measure the impact of various negative income tax plans on labor force behavior and other activities of low-income families.
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From page 4...
... Distressed by the dilemmas of this incident, OEO officials asked the Committee to give special attention to the problem of confidentiality and to make recommendations for ways of ensuring confidentiality of data collected in future evaluations and experiments. THE NEED FOR EVALUATION The Office of Economic Opportunity was only the most conspicuous of the many federal agencies that were involved in the enormous expansion of social welfare programs in the 1960's, programs that provide cash, in-kind benefits, or human services directly to individuals and families.
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From page 5...
... Hence, informed decision making about federal activities will require more and more evaluations based on sensitive information about individual behavior. Improved survey design and management, including improved statistical sampling procedures, questionnaire design, analytic techniques, and data processing capabilities make such evaluation feasible, but the increased collection of data from and about individuals increases the threat to privacy and the danger that these data will be misused.
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From page 6...
... Therefore, the Committee decided that its most useful contribution to this complex problem would be to present some specific proposals that can be the basis for wide discussion by those concerned with the problem both inside and outside the federal government. The specific proposals included in this report cover two broad areas, corresponding to two distinct risks to the privacy of individuals who provide information about themselves to evaluators of social programs.
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From page 7...
... Based on its review of these papers and its own deliberation, the Committee recommends: (1) that all federal agencies engaging in evaluation research adopt rigorous procedures to ensure that data collected about individuals in the course of such research are kept strictly confidential and are not used for purposes other than such research or released in any way that permits identification of individuals; (2)
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Key Terms

  • individual privacy
  • legal protection
  • social experimentation
  • law enforcement
  • protect individual

  • public programs
  • income tax
  • negative income
  • confidential information
  • specific proposals

  • information collected
  • federal evaluation
  • evaluation data
  • facilitating evaluation
  • federal statute

  • usable evaluation
  • federal money
  • funded evaluation
  • evaluation requires
  • social welfare

  • confidential data
  • evaluation feasible
  • major social
  • safeguard individual
  • social experiment

  • social programs
  • social policy
  • data confidentiality
  • reevaluate public
  • data processing


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