Duncan Serves on National Research Council Panel
George Duncan, Professor of Statistics at the Heinz School and the Department of Statistics, has been named as a member of the National Research Council's Panel on Access to Research Data: Assessing Risks and Opportunities.
This study will assess competing approaches to promoting exploitation of the research potential of microdata, particularly linked longitudinal microdata--while preserving respondent confidentiality. The ultimate goal is for the panel to make recommendations about how microdata should optimally (from a societal standpoint) be made available to researchers. This will require, among other things, thinking about how to measure the value of the research good made possible by data production and access, as well as the risk (and associated cost) of disclosures. Such measures are needed in order to assess the tradeoff between the benefits derived from increased protection of data versus those derived from fuller data access.
Dr. Duncan's research centers on information technology and social accountability, with a particular focus on development of disclosure limitation methods for confidentiality of statistical databases. He has published more than seventy papers in such journals as Statistical Science, Management Science, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Econometrica, and Psychometrika. He chaired the Panel on Confidentiality and Data Access of the National Academy of Sciences (1989-1993), resulting in the book, Private Lives and Public Policies: Confidentiality and Accessibility of Government Statistics. He chaired the American Statistical Association's Committee on Privacy and Confidentiality. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1996 he was elected Pittsburgh Statistician of the Year by the American Statistical Association.