A New Approach for the Development of a Public Use Microdata File for Canada's 2011 National Household Survey /

Statistics Canada has produced a hierarchical PUMF that relies on perturbation instead of suppression to protect data confidentiality. This paper describes the creation of this new type of PUMF for the Agency. The creation of this PUMF using data perturbation techniques, a first for Statistics Canada, was in many ways a research development project. In the process, ways were devised to avoid overlap with other PUMFs, to adapt and apply risk measures for a multitude of personal and household characteristics, and to carry out perturbations for related characteristics.