tailieunhanh - Statistical Issues In Interactive Web-based Public Health Data Dissemination Systems

creative and thoughtful new approaches, as indicated above. Their analyses, however, have not been guided by theory or statistical and ethical principles, and have not taken account of extensive research on these issues and development of new methods that has taken place in the last two decades. Government and academic statisticians, largely outside of public health, have developed a variety of “perturbation” methods such as “data swapping” and “controlled rounding” that can limit disclosure risk while maximizing. | WORKING PAPER Statistical Issues in Interactive Web-based Public Health Data Dissemination Systems MICHAEL A. STOTO WR-106 October 2003 Prepared for the National Association of Public Health Statistics and Information Systems This product is part of the RAND Health working paper series. RAND working papers are intended to share researchers latest findings and to solicit informal peer review. They have been approved for circulation by RAND Health but have not been formally edited or peer reviewed. Unless otherwise indicated working papers can be quoted and cited without permission of the author provided the source is clearly referred to as a working paper. RAND s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Statistical Issues in Interactive Web-based Public Health Data Dissemination Systems EXECUTIVE SUMMARY State- and community-level public health data are increasingly being made available on the World Wide Web for the use of professionals and the public. The goal of this paper is to identify and address the statistical issues associated with these interactive data dissemination systems. The analysis is based on telephone interviews with 14 individuals in five states involved with the development and use of seven distinct interactive web-based public health data dissemination systems as well as experimentation with the systems themselves. Interactive web-based systems offer state health data centers an important opportunity to disseminate data to public health professionals local government officials and community leaders and in the process raise the profile of health issues and involve more people in community-level decision making. The primary statistical concerns with web-based dissemination systems relate to the small number of individuals in the cells of tables when the analysis is focused on small geographic areas or in other ways. In particular data for small population groups can be lacking in statistical .