Privacy, ethics, and data access: A case study of the Fragile Families Challenge

TL;DR

This paper examines the ethical and privacy challenges faced during the Fragile Families Challenge, a large-scale social science data collaboration, highlighting processes for threat mitigation and ethical principles to balance data access and protection.

Contribution

It provides a detailed case study of managing privacy and ethics in a large social science data project, offering insights and transparency for future similar efforts.

Findings

Implemented threat modeling and mitigation strategies

Established ethical principles guiding data access and protection

Shared transparent process and trade-offs for community improvement

Abstract

Stewards of social science data face a fundamental tension. On one hand, they want to make their data accessible to as many researchers as possible to facilitate new discoveries. At the same time, they want to restrict access to their data as much as possible in order to protect the people represented in the data. In this paper, we provide a case study addressing this common tension in an uncommon setting: the Fragile Families Challenge, a scientific mass collaboration designed to yield insights that could improve the lives of disadvantaged children in the United States. We describe our process of threat modeling, threat mitigation, and third-party guidance. We also describe the ethical principles that formed the basis of our process. We are open about our process and the trade-offs that we made in the hopes that others can improve on what we have done.