Custom Stata Commands for Semi-automatic Confidentiality Screening of Statistics Canada Data

The use of Statistics Canada census and survey data in research data centres (RDCs) includes very specific and sometimes complex confidentiality requirements. Ensuring that statistical output meets these requirements adds an additional step to analysis that can be difficult and time-consuming. Thanks to the flexibility of Stata, this additional step can sometimes be avoided. I present newly developed Stata commands that partially automate this process. Features include reporting of minimum unweighted frequencies for weighted output, automatic rounding of results as required by a given survey, and warnings when potentially unreleasable results are generated. These commands have the potential to save time and reduce error rates for researchers using Statistics Canada data as well as for Research Data Analysts, the Statistics Canada employees responsible for confidentiality screening.