Outputs (19)

The perils of pre-filling: Lessons from the UK's Annual Survey of Hours and Earning microdata (2023)
Journal Article
Whittard, D., Ritchie, F., Phan, V., Bryson, A., Forth, J., Stokes, L., & Singleton, C. (2023). The perils of pre-filling: Lessons from the UK's Annual Survey of Hours and Earning microdata. Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 39(3), 661-677. https://doi.org/10.3233/SJI-230013

The role of the National Statistical Institution (NSI) is changing, with many now making microdata available to researchers through secure research environments This provides NSIs with an opportunity to benefit from the methodological input from rese... Read More about The perils of pre-filling: Lessons from the UK's Annual Survey of Hours and Earning microdata.

Disclosure control of machine learning models from trusted research environments (TRE): New challenges and opportunities (2023)
Journal Article
Mansouri-Benssassi, E., Rogers, S., Reel, S., Malone, M., Smith, J., Ritchie, F., & Jefferson, E. (2023). Disclosure control of machine learning models from trusted research environments (TRE): New challenges and opportunities. Heliyon, 9(4), Article e15143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e15143

Introduction: Artificial intelligence (AI) applications in healthcare and medicine have increased in recent years. To enable access to personal data, Trusted Research Environments (TREs) (otherwise known as Safe Havens) provide safe and secure enviro... Read More about Disclosure control of machine learning models from trusted research environments (TRE): New challenges and opportunities.

Not just arms and legs: Employer perspectives on student workers (2022)
Journal Article
Whittard, D., Drew, H., & Ritchie, F. (2022). Not just arms and legs: Employer perspectives on student workers. Journal of Education and Work, 35(6-7), 751-765. https://doi.org/10.1080/13639080.2022.2126972

The student workforce plays a substantial part in several low-paying industries such as retail and hospitality, and this has grown over time. However, there has been little recent research. The usual assumption is that students compete successfully w... Read More about Not just arms and legs: Employer perspectives on student workers.

10 is the safest number that there's ever been (2022)
Journal Article
Ritchie, F. (2022). 10 is the safest number that there's ever been. Transactions on data privacy, 15(2), 109-140

When checking frequency and magnitude tables for disclosure risk, the cell threshold (the minimum number of observations in each cell) is a crucial parameter. In rules-based environments, this is a hard limit on what can or can't be published. In pri... Read More about 10 is the safest number that there's ever been.

A marriage of convenience: How employers and students working in hospitality view the employment relationship (2022)
Journal Article
Evans, C., Ritchie, C., Drew, H., & Ritchie, F. (2022). A marriage of convenience: How employers and students working in hospitality view the employment relationship. Hospitality and Society, 12(3), 299-318. https://doi.org/10.1386/hosp_00055_1

Since the 1990s, the hospitality industry has been increasingly characterized by temporary and insecure forms of employment, a development, which has coincided with rising numbers of students seeking part-time employment. This provides increased job... Read More about A marriage of convenience: How employers and students working in hospitality view the employment relationship.

Measuring the value of data governance in agricultural investments: A case study (2022)
Journal Article
Whittard, D., Ritchie, F., Rose, M., & Musker, R. (2022). Measuring the value of data governance in agricultural investments: A case study. Experimental Agriculture, 58, Article e8. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0014479721000314

Summary The study at hand measures the value of improving data governance and access in the Supporting Soil Health Interventions (SSHI) project in Ethiopia. We applied two separate but interlinked models, one qualitative and one quantitative, to crea... Read More about Measuring the value of data governance in agricultural investments: A case study.

Automatic Checking of Research Outputs (ACRO): A tool for dynamic disclosure checks (2021)
Journal Article
Green, E., Ritchie, F., & Smith, J. (2021). Automatic Checking of Research Outputs (ACRO): A tool for dynamic disclosure checks. ESS Statistical Working Papers, 2021 Edition, https://doi.org/10.2785/75954

This paper discusses the issues surrounding the creation of an automatic tool to reduce the burden of output checking in research environments. It describes ACRO (Automatic Checking of Research Outputs), a Stata tool written as a proof-of-concept, an... Read More about Automatic Checking of Research Outputs (ACRO): A tool for dynamic disclosure checks.

Measuring the value of improving data governance and access in Gates Foundation programme: A case study of the Supporting Soil Health Interventions in Ethiopia projects (2021)
Journal Article
Whittard, D., Ritchie, F., & Nyengani, J. (2021). Measuring the value of improving data governance and access in Gates Foundation programme: A case study of the Supporting Soil Health Interventions in Ethiopia projects. Gates Open Research, 5, Article 97. https://doi.org/10.21955/gatesopenres.1116786.1

The Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) and the Open Data Institute (ODI) commissioned a team of economists to measure the value of improving data governance and access in the Supporting Soil Health Interventions in Ethiopia (S... Read More about Measuring the value of improving data governance and access in Gates Foundation programme: A case study of the Supporting Soil Health Interventions in Ethiopia projects.

Microdata access and privacy: What have we learned over twenty years? (2021)
Journal Article
Ritchie, F. (2021). Microdata access and privacy: What have we learned over twenty years?. Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality, 11(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.29012/jpc.766

Felix Ritchie reflects on lessons learned in twenty years of microdata access in the UK and Canada. Based on his contribution to the panel on "Privacy And Microdata Access: Two Worlds Colliding?" at the October 2020 Canadian Research Data Centre Netw... Read More about Microdata access and privacy: What have we learned over twenty years?.

Financial resilience, income dependence and organisational survival in UK charities (2021)
Journal Article
Green, E., Ritchie, F., Bradley, P., & Parry, G. (2021). Financial resilience, income dependence and organisational survival in UK charities. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 32, 992–1008. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-020-00311-9

The financial well-being of the charity sector has important social implications. Numerous studies have analysed whether the concentration of income in a few sources increases financial vulnerability. However, few studies have systematically consider... Read More about Financial resilience, income dependence and organisational survival in UK charities.

Runners, repeaters, strangers and aliens: Operationalising efficient output disclosure control (2020)
Journal Article
Alves, K., & Ritchie, F. (2020). Runners, repeaters, strangers and aliens: Operationalising efficient output disclosure control. Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 36(4), 1281-1293. https://doi.org/10.3233/SJI-200661

Statistical agencies and other government bodies increasingly use secure remote research facilities to provide access to sensitive data for research and analysis by internal staff and third parties. Such facilities depend on human intervention to ens... Read More about Runners, repeaters, strangers and aliens: Operationalising efficient output disclosure control.

User-focused threat identification for anonymised microdata (2019)
Journal Article
Ritchie, F., Hafner, H., & Lenz, R. (2019). User-focused threat identification for anonymised microdata. Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 35(4), 703-713. https://doi.org/10.3233/SJI-190506

© 2019 - IOS Press and the authors. When producing anonymised microdata for research, national statistics institutes (NSIs) identify a number of 'risk scenarios' of how intruders might seek to attack a confidential dataset. This approach has been cri... Read More about User-focused threat identification for anonymised microdata.

The five safes of risk-based anonymization (2019)
Journal Article
Arbuckle, L., & Ritchie, F. (2019). The five safes of risk-based anonymization. IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine, 17(5), 84-89. https://doi.org/10.1109/MSEC.2019.2929282

The sharing of data for the purposes of data analysis and research can have many benefits. At the same time, concerns and controversies about data ownership and data privacy elicit significant debate. So how do we utilize data in a way that protects... Read More about The five safes of risk-based anonymization.

Analyzing the disclosure risk of regression coefficients (2019)
Journal Article
Ritchie, F. (2019). Analyzing the disclosure risk of regression coefficients. Transactions on data privacy, 12(2), 145-173

A major growth area in social science research this century has been access to highly sensitive confidential microdata, often via restricted-access remote facilities. These allow researchers highly unlimited access to manipulate the data but with che... Read More about Analyzing the disclosure risk of regression coefficients.

Spontaneous recognition: An unnecessary control on data access? (2017)
Journal Article
Ritchie, F. (2017). Spontaneous recognition: An unnecessary control on data access?. https://doi.org/10.2866/430525

Social scientists increasingly expect to have access to detailed data for research purposes. As the level of detail increases, data providers worry about “spontaneous recognition”, the likelihood that a microdata user believes that he or she has acci... Read More about Spontaneous recognition: An unnecessary control on data access?.

Measuring compliance with minimum wages (2017)
Journal Article
Ritchie, F., Veliziotis, M., Drew, H., & Whittard, D. (2017). Measuring compliance with minimum wages. Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, 42(3-4), 249-270. https://doi.org/10.3233/JEM-180448

© 2017 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved. Identifying genuine underpayment of minimum wages is not straightforward. Some well-known statistical issues affect the measurement of compliance rates, but factors such as processing or behavi... Read More about Measuring compliance with minimum wages.

Principles- versus rules-based output statistical disclosure control in remote access environments (2015)
Journal Article
Ritchie, F., & Elliot, M. (2015). Principles- versus rules-based output statistical disclosure control in remote access environments. IASSIST quarterly / International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology, 2015(Summer), 5-13

In recent years, the level of detail in confidential data made available to social scientists has increased dramatically. Much of this has been due to the growth in secure data access facilities, which allow access to the most detailed data under str... Read More about Principles- versus rules-based output statistical disclosure control in remote access environments.

Access to sensitive data: Satisfying objectives rather than constraints (2014)
Journal Article
Ritchie, F. (2014). Access to sensitive data: Satisfying objectives rather than constraints. Journal of Official Statistics, 30(3), 533-545. https://doi.org/10.2478/JOS-2014-0033

The argument for access to sensitive unit-level data produced within government is usually framed in terms of risk and the legal responsibility to maintain confidentiality. This article argues that the framing of the question may restrict the set of... Read More about Access to sensitive data: Satisfying objectives rather than constraints.

International access to restricted data: A principles-based standards approach (2013)
Journal Article
Ritchie, F. (2013). International access to restricted data: A principles-based standards approach. Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 29(4), 289-300. https://doi.org/10.3233/SJI-130780

Cross-border access to restricted government microdata for research has made relatively little progress. Recent developments are notable as exceptions. This paper argues that the situation is made more complex by the lack of a common general frame of... Read More about International access to restricted data: A principles-based standards approach.