Protection of privacy in efficient application of randomized response techniques

In estimating the proportion of people bearing a sensitive attribute A, say, in a given community, following Warner’s (J Am Stat Assoc 60:63–69, 1965) pioneering work, certain randomized response (RR) techniques are available for application. These are intended to ensure efficient and unbiased estimation protecting a respondent’s privacy when it touches a person’s socially stigmatizing feature like rash driving, tax evasion, induced abortion, testing HIV positive, etc. Lanke (Int Stat Rev 44:197–203, 1976), Leysieffer and Warner (J Am Stat Assoc 71:649–656, 1976), Anderson (Int Stat Rev 44:213–217, 1976, Scand J Stat 4:11–19, 1977) and Nayak (Commun Stat Theor Method 23:3303–3321, 1994) among others have discussed how maintenance of efficiency is in conflict with protection of privacy. In their RR-related activities the sample selection is traditionally by simple random sampling (SRS) with replacement (WR). In this paper, an extension of an essential similarity in case of general unequal probability sample selection even without replacement is reported. Large scale surveys overwhelmingly employ complex designs other than SRSWR. So extension of RR techniques to complex designs is essential and hence this paper principally refers to them. New jeopardy measures to protect revelation of secrecy presented here are needed as modifications of those in the literature covering SRSWR alone. Observing that multiple responses are feasible in addressing such a dichotomous situation especially with Kuk’s (Biometrika 77:436–438, 1990) and Christofides’ (Metrika 57:195–200, 2003) RR devices, an average of the response-specific jeopardizing measures is proposed. This measure which is device dependent, could be regarded as a technical characteristic of the device and it should be made known to the participants before they agree to use the randomization device. The views expressed are the authors’, not of the organizations they work for. Prof Chaudhuri’s research is partially supported by CSIR Grant No. 21(0539)/02/EMR-II.     

Review article: Comparing the Durkheimian and Marxist traditions

Solidarity and Schism: 'The Problem of Disorder' in Durkheimian and Marxist Sociology , David Lockwood     

Item count technique with no floor and ceiling effects

Abstract

Conclusions of sample surveys dealing with matters of privacy are often disputed. Many people either refuse to participate or provide false answers. Indirect questioning techniques are designed so that reliable estimates can be produced while the privacy of the participants is protected. One such method, the Item Count Technique is gaining increasing popularity. However, the original version of the method does not fully protect the privacy of the participants. In this paper we propose a new version of the technique which better protects the privacy of the respondents and does not have the so-called floor and ceiling effects.     

Minimum spectral connectivity projection pursuit

Statistics and Computing - We study the problem of determining the optimal low-dimensional projection for maximising the separability of a binary partition of an unlabelled dataset, as measured by...     

Encyclopaedia,genealogy, tradition: a sociocultural critique of MacIntyre's three moral discourses

The paper provides a critical account of Alasdair MacIntyre's moral theory. It argues that, contrary to his position, the three discourses that he examines, as attempts to provide moral guidelines to one's life trajectory are complementary, under late‐modern conditions, rather than contradictory.     

Reflexive modernization and the third way: the impasses of Giddens' social-democratic politics

In the light of a critical account of Giddens’ three recent books on politics (1994, 1998, 2000) this paper argues that it is possible to formulate a third way, that is different both form the ad hoc mixture of neo‐liberal and conventional social‐democratic recipes found in the Blair/Schröder type of discourse, as well as from Giddens’ utopianism that is blind to political economy realities. This alternative version of the third way, guided by a non‐economistic holistic framework should stress the continuous relevance of the Left‐Right divide, ie, the continuities between early and late modernity and between the old and new emancipatory struggles against tyranny, exploitation and cultural/symbolic manipulation. It should also attempt to elaborate new reform proposals (in the area of the work, welfare, democracy, the life world) that take seriously into account the contradictions and present distribution of economic, political and cultural power, both on the national and the global level.     

Post-Parsonian Theory

Sociological Forum -     

Restructuring structuration theory

The article looks critically at Giddens's duality of structure notion which is at the centre of his structuration theory. It argues that the concept of subject/object dualism, which is not seriously considered by structuration theory, is as essential as the concept of duality for an understanding of how actors orient themselves to rules and resources as a virtual order, as well as to sets of interactions in time and space.     

Divisive clustering of high dimensional data streams

Clustering streaming data is gaining importance as automatic data acquisition technologies are deployed in diverse applications. We propose a fully incremental projected divisive clustering method for high-dimensional data streams that is motivated by high density clustering. The method is capable of identifying clusters in arbitrary subspaces, estimating the number of clusters, and detecting changes in the data distribution which necessitate a revision of the model. The empirical evaluation of the proposed method on numerous real and simulated datasets shows that it is scalable in dimension and number of clusters, is robust to noisy and irrelevant features, and is capable of handling a variety of types of non-stationarity.