Using weights to signify variable importance in PARAT

One of the powerful capabilities in PARAT is that it allows the end-user to specify weights for each one of the quasi-identifiers. A weight reflects how important a particular quasi-identifier is for subsequent analysis. If a quasi-identifiers has a high weight then it means that the variable is important and PARAT will try to minimize the amount of distortion (generalization and suppression) to that variable during the de-identification process. This video shows you how to set weights and gives an example of the impact of changing weights.

Quasi-identifier weights is one of the parameters that you would change when deciding which de-identification solution to use.

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