How do Stakeholders Understand Privacy? 

Findings from In-depth Interviews about

Differential Privacy

Isabela Coelho (JPSM)

Samantha Chiu (Independent Consultant)

Frauke Kreuter (JPSM & LMU)

Jörg Drechsler (JPSM & Institute for Employment Research)

Rolando Rodriguez (US Census Bureau)

Trent Buskirk (Bowling Green State University)

FCSM Research & Policy Conference | October 25, 2023 | 

New Perspectives and Methods on Privacy and Disclosure 

Control
Introduction

• Develop educational material, training, and outreach activities on the use of formal privacy in 

sample surveys.

• RQ1: What are the stakeholders' attitudes, perceptions, and participation levels toward 

privacy?

• RQ2: Is there a demand for the protections afforded by differential privacy?

• Qualitative interviews to gather information and establish a baseline with data privacy experts.

• Contrast the results using three overlapping questions from a survey conducted with the 

general population.
Introduction

Survey with the general population (Thanks to Trent Buskirk):

• Scrape post from Twitter.

• Identify users posting about privacy.

• Build a sampling frame.

• Sample selected in non-overlapping segments based on keywords content.

• Conduct a survey about privacy.

• Three overlapping questions:

⮚ Privacy definition: How would you define “privacy” in your own words?

⮚ Privacy topics: What privacy topic(s) are you most concerned about these days?

⮚ Privacy protection methods: What types of privacy protection methods are you familiar with?
Pilot study design

US Census Bureau employees

Senior positions

19 years working for CB

Qualitative - Quantitative analysis

AtlasTI and R

Image by FreePik
Privacy definition

Subject Matter Experts:

• Professional vs. personal life contexts.

• Privacy x Confidentiality x Identifiability

• The right to protect personal information.

Twitter Sample:

• The ability to keep personal information confidential and not for public consumption.

• Privacy is “the right to anonymity when you wish it to be maintained and the upholding of our 

4th amendment at all costs.” (Journalist)

13% 33% 54%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Prior Experience with Confidentiality

Beginner Intermediate Advanced
Privacy topics

Subject Matter Experts:

• Respondent re-identification and accidental release.

• Confidentiality vs. identifiability

• Trade-off between privacy protection and usefulness of data.

• Explain the guarantee of DP to non-technical stakeholders.

• Unexpected use of location data and targeting by advertisers. 

Twitter Sample:

• Lack of transparency and control of personal data.

• Risk of government surveillance.
Privacy protection methods

Subject matter experts Frequency Twitter Sample Frequency

Noise infusion 13 Laws and regulations 23

Differential privacy 11 VPN 7

Data swapping 11 Encryption 6

Cell suppression 9 Burner accounts 6

Synthetic data 8 Private browsers 5

Formal privacy 6 Two-Factor authentication 5

Top and bottom coding 6 Limiting Smart Home Device Usage 4

Rounding 6 Offline living 3

Aggregation / collapsing categories 4 Passwords 2

Coarsening 2 Ask app not to track 2
Differential Privacy

Subject Matter Experts:

• All the experts said they are somewhat or very familiar with DP.

• Theory vs. practice.

• 86% have used any privacy method. 

• Definitions include words such as “formal”, “mathematical”, “provable” and “statistical”.

• “We could use DP, whereas in a complex sample survey, the technology just isn’t there yet”. 

(Statistician / Mathematician)
Conclusion

• Subject Matter Experts differentiate privacy according to their job and personal life.

• Subject Matter Experts are more familiar with formal privacy techniques.

• Twitter sample talks more about laws, regulations, and best practices to increase online security.

• Survey data vs. “found” data.

Image by FreePik
Thank you!

icoelho1@umd.edu