This program aims to answer the call for knowledge and innovation that has arisen out of recent events and inquiries about studies involving human subjects. Analyses underway now at influential public institutions such as the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine are likely to call for new research on the risks of human research. In the area of social science research, we expect those calls to emphasize the reduction of disclosure risk and the creation of new responsibilities for data dissemination.

The Survey Research Center (SRC) and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan have developed four closely related projects that address the protection of human subjects through disclosure risk analysis and disclosure limitation.