The Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research

Dr Mark Elliot
Senior Research Fellow/PGR Director

Tel: 0161 275 4257
Fax: +44 (0) 161 275 4722
M.Elliot@manchester.ac.uk 

Room  G27A
CCSR

Humanities Bridgeford Street
University of Manchester, MANCHESTER, M13 9PL

Mark Elliot has worked at the CCSR since 1996 with a spell as director from 2005-2008, mainly in the field of statistical confidentiality, founding the international recognised Confidentiality and Privacy Research Group (CAPRI) in 2002, and has managed numerous research projects within CAPRI remit. He is one of the key international researchers in the field of Statistical Disclosure and has an extensive portfolio of research grants and publications in the field.

Dr Elliot collaborates widely with non-academic partners, particularly with national statistical agencies (e.g. Office for National Statistics, US Bureau of the Census, Australian Bureau of Statistics) where he has been a key influence on disclosure control methodology used in censuses and surveys and where the SUDA software developed in collaboration with colleagues in Computer Science in Manchester is currently employed.

Aside from Confidentiality, Privacy and Disclosure his research interests include Psychology and Sociology of Attitudes.


Current Research Projects

Publications

Authored Books

(2011) Statistical Confidentiality. Springer, New York; with Duncan, G., and Salazar, J. J. My role: obtained initial contract, identified co-authors, liaison with publisher, lead author on four out of nine chapters. Work was generally divided equally between co-authors.

Book chapters

(2012, forthcoming) ‘The Changing Social Data Landscape’ in Halfpenny, P. and  Procter, R. (eds.) Innovation in Digital Research Methods. Sage

(2012, forthcoming) ‘Exploiting new sources of data’ in Halfpenny, P. and Procter, R. (eds.) Innovation in Digital Research Methods. Sage

(2010) ‘Data Environment Analysis and the Key Variable Mapping System’ with Lomax, S., Mackey, E. and Purdam, P. In J Domingo-Ferrer and E Magkos (eds) Privacy in Statistical Databases. Springer; Berlin.

 (2005) ‘Statistical Disclosure Control’ Encyclopaedia of Social Measurement’. Volume 3 New York: Elsevier.  pp 663-670.

 (2002) ‘Disclosure Risk Assessment’ in Zayatz, L. et al (eds) Confidentiality, Disclosure and Data Access New York: Elsevier.

 (2002) ‘Linking file and record level risk assessment’, in J. Domingo-Ferrer (ed) Inference Control in Statistical Databases, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2316, pp. 126-134.

Academic Journal Papers

(Under review) A multilevel analysis of the relationship between national economic conditions, an individual’s job insecurity and well-being in Western Europe. Work, Employment and Society. with Carr, E. and Tranmer, M.

(2009) Factors affecting the performance of parallel mining of minimal unique itemsets on diverse architectures.  Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience 21(9), pp 1131-1158 with Haglin, J., Mayes, K. R., Manning, A. M., Feo, J., Gurd, J. R., and Keane, J. A.

(2008) A Measure of Disclosure Risk for Tables of Counts. Transactions in Data Privacy. 1(1), 34-52 With Smith, D.

(2008) Statistical Disclosure Control Architectures for Patient Records in Biomedical Information Systems, The Journal of Biomedical Informatics 41, pp 58-64 with Purdam, K. and Smith, D.

(2007) A Case Study of the Impact of Statistical Disclosure Control on Data Quality in the Individual UK Samples of Anonymised Records. Environment and Planning A. 39, 1101-1118 with Purdam K.

(2005) ‘Proposals for Small Area Microdata’. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A. 168:1. 29-49 with Tranmer, M, Fieldhouse E., Dale A., and Brown, M., Steel, D., Pickles, S. Gardiner, C., and Martin, D.

(2005) Social survey data, disclosure control and the development of the grid computing, New Review of Information Networking, Vol 10(2), pp 161-176. with Purdam, K., Pickles, S. and Smith, D.

(2004) The Regulation of the Personal Journal of policy studies 25:4. 267-282, with Purdam, K. and Mackey, E.

(2002). 'A Computational Algorithm for Handling the Special Uniques Problem'. International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge Based Systems 5(10), pp 493-509. with Manning, A. M. and Ford, R. W.

(2002). 'A measure of disclosure risk for microdata', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, 64(4) pp 855-867; with Skinner, C. J.

(2001) ‘Proposals for the 2001 SARs: an assessment of disclosure risk.’  Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A; 164(3), 1-21 with Dale, A.

(2001) 'Data Intrusion Simulation: Advances and a Vision for the Future of Disclosure Control.' Statistical Journal of the United Nations 17. 1-9.

 (2000) ‘DIS: A new approach to the Measurement of Statistical Disclosure Risk.’ International Journal of Risk Management. 2(4). 39-48

 (1999) ‘Scenarios of Attack: The Data Intruder's Perspective on Statistical Disclosure Risk.’ Netherlands Official Statistics. Spring 1999. pp 6-10. with Dale, A

(1998) ‘Special Uniques, Random Uniques and Sticky Populations: Some Counterintuitive Effects of Geographical Detail on Disclosure Risk.’ Research in Official Statistics; 1(2) pp 53-68 with Skinner, C. J., and Dale, A.

(1995) ‘Constructive Knowledge Engineering’ Knowledge Based Systems 8,5. 259-267. with Bull, H. T.; Pulford, C. I.; Shadbolt, N. R.; Smith, W.

(1995). ‘Knowledge engineering in the brewing industry’, Ferment 8 (1):49-54. with Bull H, Pulford CI, Shadbolt NR, Smith W, and Sunderland P.

Working Papers

(2011) A multilevel analysis of the relationship between national economic conditions, an individual’s job insecurity and well-being in Western Europe. CCSR Paper 2011-05 with Carr, E. and Tranmer, M.

(2011) End Game: Can Game Theory Help Us Explain How a Statistical Disclosure Might Occur and Play Out? CCSR Paper 2011-02, with Mackey, E.

(2003) ‘A measure of risk for Aggregate Data’ CCSR Occasional paper 25. With Smith, D.

(2001) 'A Measure of Disclosure Risk for Microdata'. CCSR occasional paper 23. with Skinner, C. J.

(2001)  ‘Proposals for the 2001 SARs: an assessment of disclosure risk.’  CCSR occasional paper 16. with Dale, A.

(2000) ‘Small Area Microdata’. CCSR Occasional paper 20. With Tranmer, M, Fieldhouse E., Dale A., and Brown, M.

Publications in conference proceedings.

(2011) ‘Key Variable Mapping System II’ Proceedings of UNECE worksession on Statistical Confidentiality, Taragonna, October 2011. with Smith, D., Mackey, E. M. And Purdam, K.

(2011) ‘Formalizing the Selection of Key Variables in Disclosure Risk Assessement’, Proceedings of the 58th Congress of the International Statistical Institute, Dublin August 2011.  With Mackey E. and Purdam, K.

(2010) ‘The application of Game theory to disclosure events.’ Proceedings of UNECE worksession on Statistical Confidentiality, Bilboa, December 2009. with Mackey, E. M.

(2009) A Measure of Risk for Tables of Counts. Proceedings of UNECE worksession on Statistical Confidentiality, Manchester, December 2007. with Smith M.

(2009) Using Targeted Perturbation of Microdata to Protect Against Intelligent Linkage Proceedings of UNECE worksession on Statistical Confidentiality, Manchester, December 2007.

(2007)Confidentiality, privacy and disclosure in health data: a 20th century problem needing a 21st century solution?. Proceedings of Exploiting Existing Data For Health Research, St Andrews; September 2007

(2006) A computational method for solving the combinatorial explosiveness of the special uniques detection problem.  Proceedings of Privacy in Statistical databases 2006.  Rome December 2006; with Mayes, K, Manning, A, Haglin, D and Gurd, J.

(2006) “Patient Record Data: Disclosure Control for Grid Based Data Access” Proceedings of National centre for e-social Science Conference, Manchester, June 2006. with Purdam, K., and Smith, D.

(2006) A distributed search infrastructure for Statistical Disclosure Control Proceedings of National centre for e-social Science Conference Manchester. With Mayes, K; Manning, A; Haglin, D; Gurd, JR

(2005) “A study of data protection: harmonisation or confusion?” Proceedings of 21st BILETA Conference Globalisation and Harmonisation in Technology Law. Belfast; April 2005; with McCullagh K.

(2005) Disclosure risk and grid computing, Proceedings of UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, Nottingham 2005 with Purdam, K., Pickles, S. and Smith, D.

(2005) Disclosure Control and Data Quality. Proceedings of the Conference of the International Statistical Institute. Sydney April 2005 with Purdam, K.

(2005) M. SUDA: a program for identifying and grading special uniques. Proceedings of UNECE worksession of Statistical Confidentiality, Geneva, November 2005. with Manning, A., Mayes, K. and Bane, M.

(2005) “Confidentiality Data Access and Grid Computing”, Proceedings of 1st International Conference for e-Social Science, Manchester, June 2005. with Purdam, K and Smith, D.

(2005) An Experiment in Naive Bayesian Record Linkage, Proceedings of Conference of the International Statistical Institute, Sydney, April, 2005. with Smith, D.

(2003) ‘Analysis of Information Loss: a Case Study from a UK Survey’ Proceedings of Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology Research Conference, Washington DC, USA. November 2003 with Purdam, K.

(2003) “Personal Data, Privacy and the 2001 UK Census” Proceedings of International Conference for the Development of the Information Society Conference. Lisbon, Portugal June 2003 with Purdam, K., and Mackey, E.

(2003) Data Quality and Disclosure Control”, Proceedings of International Statistics Institute Conference, Berlin 2003. with Purdam, K.

(2003) ‘Using DIS to calibrate the output of SUDA’. in: Proceedings of UNECE international conference on statistical confidentiality.

(2003) Applying disclosure control to temporal data. To appear in Proceedings of Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM) Research Conference. Washington DC. November 2003. with Manning, A

(1999) “DIS: Data intrusion simulation - a method of estimating the worst case disclosure risk for a microdata file”. Proceedings of international symposium on linked employee-employer records, Washington; May 1998.

(1998) “Special Uniques, Random Uniques and Sticky Populations”. Proceedings of to 1st International Conference on Statistical Data Protection March 1998. pp 261-275 with Skinner, C. J., and Dale, A.

(1996) Attacks on Confidentiality using the Sample of Anonymised Records: an analysis Proceedings of the third international seminar on statistical confidentiality. Bled, October 1996.

 

Other Publications

(2003) A Case Study of the Impact of Statistical Disclosure Control on Data Quality in the UK Samples of Anonymised Records CASC project Report 5D2. [See http://neon.vb.cbs.nl/casc/] with Purdam K.

(2003) A Case Study of the Impact of Statistical Disclosure Control on Data Quality in the UK Samples of Anonymised Records. CASC project Report 5D3. [See http://neon.vb.cbs.nl/casc/] with Purdam K.

(2002) An evaluation of the availability of public data sources which could be used for identification purposes – A Europe wide perspective, CASC project Report 5D1. [See http://neon.vb.cbs.nl/casc/] with Purdam K.

(1998) Disclosure Risk for Microdata. Report to the European Union ESP/ 204 62/DG III. With Dale A.

(2006) Report on the Ability to attack the Labour Force Survey through linkage with an outside dataset. December 2006.

(2005) Assessment of disclosure risk for hierarchical microdata files: Report to ONS in completion of The Development of an Improved Procedure for Assessing and Managing Disclosure Risk for Submissions to Microdata Release Panel

(2004) A Special Uniques Analysis on the 2001 Samples of Anonymised Records. Report to the Office for National Statistics, with Manning A.

(2004) A Special Uniques Analysis of the Labour Force Survey. Report to the Office for National Statistics.  January 2004, with Manning A.

(2003) A Special Uniques Analysis on the 1991 SARs. Report to the Office for National Statistics.  August 2003, with Manning A.

(2003) The IDRAPN project, Empirical Work. Report to the Office for National Statistics.  November 2003. With Smith, D

(2003) The IDRAPN project, Specification of Software. Report to the Office for National Statistics.  November 2003. With Smith, D.

(2002) An examination of the disclosure associated with the  Labour Force Survey. Report to the Office for National Statistics.  April 2002.

(2002) An examination of the disclosure associated with the  Labour Force Survey. Report to the Office for National Statistics.  April 2002.

(2001) An initial assessment of the disclosure risk impact of adding the NOMIS geographical identifier to the Labour Force Survey. Report to the Office for National Statistics.  August 2001.

(2001) An interim report examining the disclosure associated with the Labour Force Survey. Report to the Office for National Statistics.  November 2001.

(2000) Applying the Data Intrusion Simulation methodology to assess the disclosure risk impact of SDL techniques on a microdata file. Report to the US Bureau of the Census. September 2000.

OLD PUBLICATION LIST TO BE REMOVED

Smith, D., Elliot, M J. Aspects of naive Bayesian Record Linkage, CCSR Occasional Paper.
Smith, D., Elliot, M J. Aspects of naive Bayesian Record Linkage, CCSR Occasional Paper(25).
Duncan, G, Elliot, M J., Salazar, J. J. (forthcoming) Statistical Confidentiality. New York: Springer, 2011.
Smith, D., Elliot, M J. "A Measure of Disclosure Risk for Tables of Counts." Transactions in Data Privacy 1, no. 1(2008) : 34-52.
Purdam, K., Elliot, M J. "A Case Study of the Impact of Statistical Disclosure Control on a Data Quality in the Individual UK Samples of Anonymised Records." Environment and Planning A(2007) : 1101-1118.
Elliot, M J., Mayes, K, Manning, A, Haglin, D, Gurd, J. 2006. A computational method for solving the combinatorial explosiveness of the special uniques detection problem. In Proceedings of Privacy in Statistical databases. Rome.
Watt, L, Elliot, M J., Fenwick, K, Olsen, W K. 2006. Attitudes Towards Relationships within the 18-30 Age Group. In British Sociological Association, Harrogate.
Mayes, K, Elliot, M J., Manning, A, Haglin, D, Gurd, J. 2006. A distributed search infrastructure for Statistical Disclosure Control. In Grid National centre for e-social Science Conference, Manchester.
Elliot, M J., Purdam, K., Smith, D. 2006. Patient Record Data: Disclosure Control for Grid Based Data Access. In Proceedings of National centre for e-social Science Conference, Manchester.
McCullagh, K, Elliot, M J. 2006. A study of data protection: harmonisation or confusion?. In 21st Annual BILETA Conference "Globalisation and Harmonisation in Technology Law".
Elliot, M J. 2005. Developments in Statistical Disclosure Control. In Census: Present and Future, Leicester.
Elliot, M J. 2005. The Clinical e-Science Framework: An example of remote data access. In Paper presented at the CS-Statistics Workshop on Privacy and Confidentiality, Bertinoro.
Elliot, M J. 2005. Statistical Confidentiality. In Confidentiality and ethical issues in the scientific usage of clinical and administrative data, Colchester.
Elliot, M J. 2005. An Overview of Statistical Disclosure Control. In RSS Social Statistics Committee Conference on Linking Survey and Administrative Data and Statistical Disclosure Control, London.
Elliot, M J., Purdam, K. 2005. Disclosure Control and Data Quality. In International Statistical Institute, Sydney.
Elliot, M J., Manning, A, Mayes, K, Bane. 2005. SUDA: a program of identifying and grading special uniques. In UNECE Worksession on Statistical Data Confidentiality. Geneve.
Smith, D., Elliot, M J. 2005. An Experiment in Naive Bayesian Record Linkage. In 55th Session of the International Statistical Institute, Sydney, Australia.
Purdam, K., Elliot, M J. 2005. The Impact of Statistical Disclosure Control on Data Quality. In ISI Conference, Sydney Australia.
McCullagh, K, Elliot, M J. 2005. Identity information: the tension between privacy and the societal benefits associated with biometric database surveillance. In 20th Annual BILETA Conference Over-Commoditised; Over-Centralised: Over-Observed: the New Digital Legal World.
Elliot, M J., Purdam, K., Smith, D. 2005. Confidentiality Data Access via the Grid. In First International Conference on e-Social Science Manchester.
Elliot, M J., Purdam, K., Smith, D. 2005. Data Monitoring, grid computing and Confidentiality. In International Symposium on Confidentiality and Privacy Manchester.
Elliot, M J., Purdam, K., Pickles, S, Smith, D. 2005. Disclosure risk and grid computing. In UK e-Science All Hands Meeting Nottingham.
Elliot, M J., Purdam, K., Smith, D. 2005. Patient Record Data: Disclosure Control for Grid Based Data Access. In Proceedings of National centre for e-social Science Conference.
Purdam, K., Elliot, M J., Smith, D. "Social survey data, disclosure control and the development of the grid computing." New Review of Information Networking 10:2(2005) : 161-176.
Tranmer, M., Pickles, A R., Fieldhouse, E A., Elliot, M J., Dale, A., Brown, M S., Martin, D, Steel, D.G, Gardiner, C. "Proposals for Small Area Microdata." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society series A 168(1)(2005) : 29-49. DOI:10.1111/j.1467-985X.2004.00334.x
Smith, D., Elliot, M J. 2004. Asessing Attribution Risk in Population Data. In International Conference of the Royal Statistical Society.
Purdam, K., E. Mackey, Elliot, M J. "The Regulation of the Personal." Policy Studies 25(4)(2004) : 267-281.
Elliot, M J., Purdam, K. 2003. Data Quality and Disclosure Control. In International Statistics Institute Conference.
Elliot, M J., A Manning. 2003. Applying disclosure control to temporal data. In Proceedings of Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM) Research Conference.
Elliot, M J., Purdam, K., E Mackey. 2003. Whose Data Is It? Personal Data and Privacy. In British Sociology Association Annual Conference.
Elliot, M J., D Smith, E Mackey. 2003. Disclosure Control for Neighbourhood Statistics. In Workshop on Threats and Opportunities for Labour Market Statistics.
Elliot, M J., Purdam, K. 2003. Analysis of Information Loss: a Case Study from a UK Survey. In Proceedings of Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology Research Conference.
Elliot, M J. 2003. Using DIS to Calibrate the Output of SUDA. In Proceedings of UNECE international conference on statistical confidentiality.
Purdam, K., E Mackey, Elliot, M J. 2003. Personal Data and Privacy. In International Association for the Information Society, Conference Proceedingsed. Isaias, P..
Elliot, M J., D Smith. An interim report on the IDRAPN project, Report to the Office for National Statistics. 2003.
Elliot, M J. "Disclosure Risk Assessment." In Confidentiality, Disclosure and Data Access, ed. Zayatz, L., New York: Elsevier, 2002.
Elliot, M J. "Linking file and record level risk assessment." In Inference Control in Statistical Databases, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, ed. Domingo-Ferrer, J., 126-134.2002.
Elliot, M J., A Manning, R Ford. "A Computational Algorithm for Handling the Special Uniques Problem." International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge Based Systems 5(10)(2002) : 493-509.
Elliot, M J., C Skinner. "A Measure of Disclosure Risk for Microdata." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 64(4)(2002) : 855-867.
Elliot, M J. 2002. New Data, New Opportunities. In ESRC Research Methods Programme workshop: ‘Combining data: using advanced technology to enhance social science resources.
Elliot, M J. 2002. The use of high performance computing in the detection of risky records. In International Conference of the Royal Statistical Society.
Elliot, M J., Purdam, K. 2002. An evaluation of the availability of public data sources which could be used for identification purposes A Europe wide perspective.
Elliot, M J. "Data Intrusion Simulation: Advances and a Vision for the Future of Disclosure Control." Statistical Journal of the United Nations 17(2001) : 1-9.
Elliot, M J. 2001. Data Intrusion Simulation: Advances and a Vision for the Future of Disclosure Control. In 2nd UNECE work session on Statistical Data Protection.
Elliot, M J., A Manning. 2001. The Identification of Special Uniques. In Proceedings of GSS Methodology Conference.
Elliot, M J. An interim report examining the disclosure associated with the Labour Force Survey, Report to the Office for National Statistics. 2001.
Elliot, M J. An initial assessment of the disclosure risk impact of adding the NOMIS geographical identifier to the Labour Force Survey, Report to the Office for National Statistics. 2001.
Elliot, M J., C Skinner. A Measure of Disclosure Risk for Microdata, CCSR Occasional Paper. Vol. no 23. 2001.
Elliot, M J. Integrated file level and record level disclosure risk assessment, Proceedings of 1st ARMRADS workshop on Statistical Confidentiality. 2001. Luxembourg.
Dale, A., Elliot, M J. "Proposals for the 2001 SARs: an assessment of disclosure risk." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A 164(3)(2001) : 427-447.
Elliot, M J. "DIS: a new approach to the measurement of statistical disclosure risk." Risk Management: An International Journal 2,4(2000) : 39-48.
Elliot, M J. Applying the Data Intrusion Simulation methodology to assess the disclosure risk impact of SDL techniques on a microdata file, Report to the US Bureau of the Census. 2000.
Elliot, M J. Proposals for 2001 SARS: an assessment of disclosure risk, CCSR. Vol. 16. 2000. 1-8-99005188. 28.
Elliot, M J., Tranmer, M., Fieldhouse, E A., Dale, A., M Brown. Small Area Microdata, CCSR Occasional Paper. Vol. no 20. 2000.
Elliot, M J. 1999. New Approaches to Statistical Disclosure Risk. In International Conference of the Royal Statistical Society.
Elliot, M J. 1999. Disclosure Risk Assessment. In International Workshop Optimizing Data Utility within a Framework of Confidentiality.
Elliot, M J., Dale, A. "Scenarios of attack: the data intruder's perspective on statistical disclosure risk." Netherlands Official Statistics 14(1999) : 6-10.
Elliot, M J. 1998. DIS: Data intrusion simulation - a method of estimating the worst case disclosure risk for a microdata file. In Proceedings of international symposium on linked employee-employer records.
C Skinner, Dale, A., Elliot, M J. "Special uniques, random uniques and sticky populations: some counterintuitive effects of geographical details on disclosure risk." Research in Official Statistics 1,2(1998) : 53-68.
Elliot, M., C Skinner, Dale, A. "Special Uniques, Random Uniques and Sticky Populations: Some Counterintuitive Effects of Geographical Detail on Disclosure Risk." Research in Official Statistics 2(1998) : 53-67.
Elliot, M J., Dale, A. Disclosure Risk for Microdata, Report to the European Union ESP/ 204 62/DG III. 1998.
Elliot, M J., C Skinner, Dale, A. 1998. Special Uniques, Random Uniques and Sticky Populations. In Proceedings of to 1st International Conference on Statistical Data Protection261-275.
Elliot, M J., Dale, A. 1998. Approaches to assessing disclosure risk with microdata. In GSS workshop on Disclosure and Disclosure Control.
University of Manchester CCSR