Research access to microdata - challenges to confidentiality protection and main constraints.

Research demand for microdata encounters specific particularities due to the basicrequirements for providing decision makers with accurate and reliable studies. As microdata refers tounit record or low level data that has not been sufficiently aggregated to be made publicly available,the main challenges for research institutes resides in the need to protect respondent confidentiality.The paper focuses on the opportunities brought by using the microdata for better serving the researchneeds in its endeavours of giving new insights in the content of the data, by taking into considerationthe key challenges arising from confidentiality routines. New internet based applications not only thatmay allow users from research environment to easily query microdata, but also may facilitateresearchers to cope with large database ensuring that the privacy of respondents and integrity of data ispreserved. Having in view the increasing demand of microdata for scientific research, there is a needto agree on the best approaches that might ease the access to microdata for researchers, first at nationallevel and secondly at the European Union level. A key determinant in this approach is theinfrastructure and data storage capacity of the research institutes. The paper describes the frameworkand objective characterizing this core issue and indentifies possible solutions for proper results by acomplex analysis of the data collected at public expense, taking into consideration the increasedconcerns over data confidentiality.