Case Study

Draft 9/7/01

U.S. Federal Statistics and Statistical Ethics: The Role of the American Statistical Association s Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice*

by

William Seltzer Senior Research Scholar Department of Sociology and Anthropology Fordham University Bronx, NY 10458 (seltzer@fordham.edu)

The paper is a revised and expanded version of a presentation made at a seminar organized by the Methodology Section, Washington Statistical Society, February 5, 2001. The present version benefitted greatly from the comments of John Gardenier, Nancy Gordon, and Virginia de Wolf, the seminar s discussant, chair, and organizer, respectively, as well as the helpful comments and suggestions of John C. Bailar III, Tom Jabine and other members of the American Statistical Association s (ASA) Committee on Professional Ethics of which I am currently chair. The views expressed in the paper are my own and not necessarily those of those who provided comments, the ASA Committee on Professional Ethics, or the ASA itself.

*

Abstract

The paper first discusses the relevance of ethical norms to government statistical work (Section 1) and then reviews some of the harms flowing from ethical lapses, with a special emphasis on those relatively rare instances when governmental data systems threatened or substantially harmed vulnerable population subgroups (Sections 2 and 3). The paper goes on to examine ethical norms as one o f a series of safeguards available to protect against threats of serious misuse involving government statistical system (Section 4). The final three sections of the paper address, respectively, the functional roles of ethical codes or guidelines (Section 5), the guidance provided by the ASA s Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice for government statisticians (Section 6) and a presentation of specific strategies for coping with and helping to prevent ethical threats to government statistical work (Section 7). While the primary focus of the paper is...