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In an Era of Enhanced Cybersecurity: The Effect of Disclosing a Third Party’s Role in Confidentiality Pledges on Response Propensity

In an Era of Enhanced Cybersecurity: The Effect of Disclosing a Third Party’s Role in... Federal surveys often pledge that personally identifiable information (PII) will be used for statistical purposes only and that the willful disclosure of PII by employees who have been sworn to confidentiality is subject to penalties. In 2015, the passing of the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act required the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to monitor federal computers for cyber threats. Since DHS personnel are not bound to the confidentiality pledges used by the statistical agencies, the question became how to inform respondents about these changes without alarming them and harming response rates. This paper reports on an experiment conducted in a survey of public-school principals with a simple random sample (n = 4,122). The experiment examined differences in response rates across three versions of pledges disclosing the cybersecurity monitor: one pledge specified explicitly the role of DHS, one referred to the monitors as “Federal employees and contractors,” and a control version referred implicitly to DHS monitors via a legal citation. Half of the pledges included the penalty language, and the other half did not. There were no statistically significant differences between any of the experimental comparisons. We conclude that, of the pledges studied, the DHS version of the pledge with penalty language provides respondents with the most accurate information for deciding whether to participate in the survey without harming response rates. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology Oxford University Press

In an Era of Enhanced Cybersecurity: The Effect of Disclosing a Third Party’s Role in Confidentiality Pledges on Response Propensity

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References (6)

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research 2022. This work is written by US Government employees and is in the public domain in the US.
ISSN
2325-0984
eISSN
2325-0992
DOI
10.1093/jssam/smac009
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Federal surveys often pledge that personally identifiable information (PII) will be used for statistical purposes only and that the willful disclosure of PII by employees who have been sworn to confidentiality is subject to penalties. In 2015, the passing of the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act required the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to monitor federal computers for cyber threats. Since DHS personnel are not bound to the confidentiality pledges used by the statistical agencies, the question became how to inform respondents about these changes without alarming them and harming response rates. This paper reports on an experiment conducted in a survey of public-school principals with a simple random sample (n = 4,122). The experiment examined differences in response rates across three versions of pledges disclosing the cybersecurity monitor: one pledge specified explicitly the role of DHS, one referred to the monitors as “Federal employees and contractors,” and a control version referred implicitly to DHS monitors via a legal citation. Half of the pledges included the penalty language, and the other half did not. There were no statistically significant differences between any of the experimental comparisons. We conclude that, of the pledges studied, the DHS version of the pledge with penalty language provides respondents with the most accurate information for deciding whether to participate in the survey without harming response rates.

Journal

Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology – Oxford University Press

Published: Apr 15, 2022

Keywords: Data monitoring; Informed consent; Nondisclosure; Personally identifiable information (PII); Privacy

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