Comparison of three anonymization tools for a health fitness study

Francis, Paul (author), Jurak, Gregor (author), Leskošek, Bojan (author), Otte, Karen (author), Prasser, Fabian (author)

One of many challenges to open science is anonymization of personal data so that it may be shared. This paper presents a case study of the anonymization of a dataset containing cardio-respiratory fitness and commuting patterns for Slovenian school children. It evaluates three different anonymization tools, ARX, SDV, and SynDiffix. The fitness study was selected because its small size (N=713) and generally low statistical significance make it particularly challenging for data anonymization. Unlike most prior anonymization tool evaluations, this paper examines whether the scientific conclusions of the original study would have been supported by the anonymized datasets. It also considers the burden imposed on researchers using the tools both for data generation and data analysis.

• Language: English
• Keywords: sport, fitness study, anonymization tools, comparison
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FŠ - Faculty of Sport
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 1-13
• Numbering: Vol. 12, art. 1548
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-184597
• UDC: 796.01
• ISSN on article: 2052-4463
• DOI: 10.1038/s41597-025-05823-x
• COBISS.SI-ID: 250497283
• Publication date in RUL: 10.07.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Scientific data
• Publisher: Springer nature
• ISSN: 2052-4463
• COBISS.SI-ID: 523393305

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: šport, primerjava, orodja za anonimizacijo, študija zdravstvene pripravljenosti