First National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey

Data enclave fees apply (contact david.dudgeon@usda.gov for more information)

• USDA Virtual Data Enclave

FoodAPS invoked the protections and regulations of the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA) of 2002 to obtain confidential information. CIPSEA requires that the collected data be used strictly for research and statistical purposes and promises respondents high levels of data protection against disclosure of identifying information. Penalties for a violation of CIPSEA procedures can result in a fine of up to $250,000 and/or five years in prison. The restrictions and protections against disclosure of confidential information follow guidelines developed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). See Implementation Guidance for Title V of the E-Government Act, Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002 (CIPSEA). All researchers, including ERS staff, must be CIPSEA-trained and sign a pledge of confidentiality before being granted access to restricted data. Before access to the restricted data is granted, researchers must submit a project description/proposal for approval and must complete an ERS Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between ERS and your organization. Furthermore, all research results must be reviewed for disclosure risk and approved by the ERS Confidentiality Officer or his/her designee before the results can be shared with anyone who has not signed an ERS confidentiality agreement that specifically relates to the FoodAPS data.

The approach for creating the PUFs included categorizing or top-coding variables with some risk of data disclosure and suppressing variables with a very high risk of disclosure. These actions were based on extensive initial disclosure risk analyses, which included the following steps: Identifying personal identifiers, geographic information, and contextual variables (variables that can indirectly identify a geographic area); Evaluating the existence of other publicly available files; Evaluating the disclosure risk associated with release of the sampling and variance estimation variables; Evaluating the disclosure risk associated with release of key variables (i.e., visible variables) through extensive frequency tables and various risk metrics; and Exhaustive review of each data item in the RUFs to determine whether any of the data presented a non-negligible risk of individual disclosure. A list of variables only available in the RUF can be found in Appendix A of the FoodAPS User Guide (https://www.ers.usda.gov/foodaps)