Protection of Survey Data Collected by KOF

The KOF Swiss Economic Institute at ETH Zurich is obliged to maintain confidentiality with respect to all data provided by survey respondents. Data privacy and confidentiality extend to the identity of the participating companies, the responses to the survey questions and the detailed composition of the companies participating in the survey. For KOF, strict maintenance of data privacy and confidentiality is a fundamental prerequisite for conducting any surveys. KOF therefore does not grant third parties access to survey data at the micro level as a matter of principle. The sole exception is access for research purposes. External scientists working at universities or publicly-funded research institutes may be granted access for non-commercial academic research work if the confidentiality of the micro data is guaranteed, and specifically if any form of re-individualisation of the anonymised data is impossible. It is principally forbidden to transfer information regarding participating companies or panel composition to third parties. Data that do not serve research purposes are made available to external parties in aggregate form only, thereby preventing any inferences regarding respondents’ individual answers. All data are saved on ETH Zurich infrastructure.

External researchers who are granted access to KOF survey data at the micro level are required to confirm their compliance with the KOF data security and data privacy provisions in writing. This obligation to comply with the data privacy and data security provisions continues beyond the completion of the research project. By virtue of their employment contracts, all KOF employees are obliged to maintain confidentiality with regard to professional and business matters. The obligation to maintain confidentiality continues beyond the end of their employment contract.

The following obligations apply to third parties accessing KOF data for research purposes:

• The micro-level survey data made available by KOF shall be used for research purposes only. Specifically, the inspection, analysis, processing or further processing of the data may not be in pursuit of commercial objectives.
• Aggregated survey data may not be re-individualised by third parties.
• External researchers receive a restricted micro data set which exclusively contains the variables necessary for the respective research project.
• Any attempt to de-anonymise the provided micro data is prohibited.
• The micro-level survey data will be made available on computers provided by the ETH IT services on protected premises. Such computers are configured and updated according to state-of-the-art IT security guidelines. The computers are not connected to the internet.
• External researchers may carry out calculations on KOF servers only. When using the computers, researchers are subject to personal access checks and their activities are monitored and recorded. This ensures that there is no unauthorised access to the workplace, the computer, the servers or the database and therefore no access to the anonymised sample by unauthorised persons.
• Any copying, transfer, printout or saving of micro-level survey data on external data carriers is prohibited and will be prevented.
• On conclusion of the research project, all of the provided data files, samples and data inferred from the micro data will be deleted.
• External researchers shall guarantee that their presentation of results planned for publication will not allow any inferences of individual data.
• All presentations of results based on the provided data will be reviewed by KOF before they are made available to persons not involved in the research project either through publication or in another manner. KOF will check whether the presentations allow any inference of individual data or panel composition. Where such information is found, researchers are required to delete it.
• All publications shall clearly state that the data was provided by KOF.