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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 2024 Mar 5;121(11):e2401501121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2401501121

Reply to Muralidhar et al., Kenny et al., and Hotz et al.: The benefits of engagement with external research teams

Ron S Jarmin a, John M Abowd b,1, Robert Ashmead a, Ryan Cumings-Menon a, Nathan Goldschlag a, Michael Hawes a, Sallie Ann Keller a, Daniel Kifer a, Philip Leclerc a, Jerome P Reiter c, Rolando A Rodríguez a, Ian Schmutte d, Victoria A Velkoff a, Pavel I Zhuravlev a
PMCID: PMC10945745  PMID: 38442177

We thank Kenny et al. (1), Hotz et al. (2), and Muralidhar et al. (3) for taking the time to comment on our recent paper [Jarmin et al. (4)]. The modernization of disclosure avoidance technology at the Census Bureau has elicited substantial response from academia, and we are delighted to see that the letters to the editor exhibit the passion that the authors hold for their research and for census data. Feedback from these and other scholars resulted in tangible and notable improvements to the 2020 Census Disclosure Avoidance System, and we are confident that continued discussion and debate on these issues will serve to further benefit the Census Bureau and its statistical products moving forward. For that, we are extremely grateful.

Acknowledgments

Author contributions

R.S.J., J.M.A., R.A., R.C.-M., N.G., M.H., S.A.K., D.K., P.L., J.P.R., R.A.R., I.S., V.A.V., and P.I.Z. wrote the paper.

Competing interests

R.S.J., R.A., R.C.-M., N.G., M.H., S.A.K., D.K., P.L., J.P.R., R.A.R., V.A.V., and P.I.Z. are employed by the U.S. Census Bureau, I.S. is employed by the University of Georgia, and J.M.A. is retired.

References

  • 1.Kenny C. T., McCartan C., Simko T., Imai K., Census officials must constructively engage with independent evaluations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A 121, e2321196121 (2024). [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 2.Hotz V. J., et al. , Reply to Jarmin et al.: The key role of absolute risk in the disclosure risk assessment of public data releases. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121, e2321882121 (2024). [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 3.Muralidhar K., Ruggles S., Domingo-Ferrer J., Sánchez D., The counterfactual framework in Jarmin et al. is not a measure of disclosure risk of respondents. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121, e2319484121 (2024). [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 4.Jarmin R. S., et al. , An in-depth examination of requirements for disclosure risk assessment. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 120, e2220558120 (2023). [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

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