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The concept of mixed-mode surveys is nothing new, but it seems to be gaining traction in the research community. Among the issues pressing the use of mixed-mode survey designs are the need to reduce coverage bias, increase response rates and lower costs.

Mixed receptionThe state hopes changes to Massachusetts' data privacy regulation plan will calm business community fears over the cost of the new controls, but watchers of the process say the government may have made things worse. One thing seems certain: the recent changes aren't likely to be the last word on regulating sensitive data in the Bay State. The regulations mandate all "personal information" belonging to Massachusetts residents be encrypted whenever it is stored on portable devices, transmitted wirelessly or shared on public networks. Changes enacted just in time to beat a deadline of Thursday, Feb. 12, pushed the effective date back eight months, from May 1 to Jan. 1, 2010. They also removed a requirement that businesses certify third-party vendors' compliance. The latter move was aimed to address an issue raised in a public hearing with business leaders held Jan. 15 at the State House. The change was designed to make the third-party regulations more adaptable to companies of various sizes and business models, said Massachusetts Consumer Affairs undersecretary Daniel Crane.

Even a booster of electronic systems like David Blumenthal, who just started his Washington post as the national coordinator of health IT, points to a myriad of challenges when it comes to digitizing the nation's medical records. Just take a look at his piece this month in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which he cites technical concerns and worries about patient privacy, among other things. In an interview with the WSJ, he said problems can crop up if the systems are installed too quickly and without enough technical support. There are plenty of potential advantages that electronic records can bring, from helping hospitals and doctors get information quickly on patients' medical histories to making catches when two drugs are being prescribed that may interact dangerously together. But there are also risks: Take a look at a study in Pediatrics that cites the case of Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, which initially saw a rise in the death rate for certain patients after computerizing its order-entry system, perhaps because it took longer to begin their treatment. (The hospital told the WSJ the study was "flawed," adding the mortality rate had fallen since then.) The WSJ also cites the case of a patient who was initially given an incorrect diagnosis based on a mix-up involving electronic records and a test result for another patient. Health Blog Question of the Day: What's been your experience with electronic records? Do they prevent safety problems or create new risks?

Last week, the government took another step toward closing a legal loophole in federal privacy and security rules for emerging Health 2.0 information technology applications by issuing proposed rules aimed at covering an estimated 900 companies and organizations offering personal health records and electronic systems connected to them. The Federal Trade Commission was careful to point out its new interim proposed rule on federal breach notification requirements for the developers of electronic PHR systems did not apply to covered organizations or their business associates as defined by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, heretofore the key federal privacy and security regulation. The FTC, operating under new authority given it by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, noted that its new rule seeks to cover previously unregulated entities that are part of a Health 2.0 product mix. FTC staff estimates that about 200 PHR vendors, another 500 related entities and 200 third-party service providers will be subject to the new breach notification rule. The staffers estimate that the 900 affected companies and organizations, on average, will experience 11 breaches each per year at a total cost of about $1 million per group, per year. Costs include investigating the breach, notifying consumers and establishing toll-free numbers for explaining the breaches and providing additional information to consumers. Pam Dixon, founder and executive director of the World Privacy Forum, said that this isn't the first involvement of the FTC in healthcare-related regulation, noting the consumer protection agency joined with the Food and Drug Administration in a joint statement on the marketing of direct-to-consumer genetic tests. The FTC also has worked in the field of healthcare competition. She noted the compliance deadline with the FTC's "red flag rules" on provider organizations that provide consumer credit to patients for installment payment

NEW YORK With increasing amounts of personal information liable to float around in cyberspace, consumers are deciding whether their data is safe in the hands of some public- and private-sector entities. A BBC World News America/Harris Poll finds a mixed verdict, with social-networking sites faring especially badly. In polling conducted last month, adults were asked to say how much trust they have in various sectors "to handle your personally identified information (such as credit-card information, contact information and so forth) in a properly confidential and secure manner." The poll's best scores went to "health providers, such as doctors and hospitals," with 20 percent of respondents expressing "a great deal of trust" and 55 percent "some trust" in these. Nineteen percent voiced "not much trust" and 7 percent "no trust at all" in this sector. At the bottom of the rankings were "social-networking sites (like Facebook or MySpace)," with 5 percent expressing a great deal of trust and 18 percent some trust in these. Thirty-one percent said they had not much trust and 46 percent no trust at all in these sites to safeguard personal information. (Whether people should direct their distrust to themselves for posting such information there in the first place is a question the survey didn't address.) Respondents were also wary of "search and portal sites (like Google or Yahoo!)" when it comes to keeping personal information secure: Ten percent voiced a great deal of trust, 39 percent some, 29 percent not much and 22 percent no trust at all. Even the federal government fared (slightly) better, with 13 percent expressing a great deal of trust, 41 percent some, 28 percent not much and 18 percent none. The scores were more positive for "banks and brokerage companies": 15 percent a great deal of trust, 43 percent some, 28 percent not much and 13 percent none. That was roughly on a par with the ratings for "my e-mail provider": 14 percent a great deal, 48 percent some, 27 p

Facebook has been in the news a lot lately, and that's not good news for Chris Kelly, who is the chief privacy officer for Facebook, and - as we've reported - is quietly exploring a possible run for the Democratic nomination for state attorney general. Kelly was at the center of a firestorm this week regarding changes in Palo Alto-based Facebook's terms of service, which critics argued gave the social-networking site control over members' uploaded material, including photos, seemingly forever. On Wednesday, Kelly told CNN that the company will listen to complaints. The company's official blog now outlines how it has pulled back but Facebook has faced other problems that could hamper Kelly's efforts to run for a California political post. Last year, as Cnet reported, the firm reached an agreement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo after an investigation of complaints that Facebook hadn't addressed consumers' complaints of "harassment and inappropriate conduct" regarding underage members. Facebook officials have said they are cooperating with law enforcement to protect their users from predators. But with the Democratic AG race already looking crowded - with San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris and Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo in the mix, among others - Democratic consultants are watching with great interest. Poke this, friends: Could this be the juicy stuff of television ads in a Democratic law-and-order race in California?

Emily Riley of Forrester Research presented a lot of data during her keynote presentation at today's OMMA Behavioral Conference but one point she made seemed rather salient to me: many of those marketers and data firms involved in behavioral targeting seem to skip over social media as a source of information. They might look at the data surrounding the usage of those sites but they seem to rarely do any actually monitoring, let alone interacting there. It reminded me of an experience I had with my wife. We once lived in a building where we didn't have much interaction with our neighbors, very little beyond an occasional wave in the hallway. We could, however see their mail mixed with ours and our landlord's. My wife began to notice that the landlord and our neighbor were starting to get similar envelopes from law firms. I, being the incurious mail sorter I am, didn't really think much of it. She, on the other hand, was convinced that one of them must be suing the other and was able to spin out some fairly detailed scenarios based on other clues from the hallway, the presence of exterminators one day, the thickness of paint on the front door etc. One day I encountered our neighbor in the hallway and did my customary wave. "Oh by the way," He said, "We're moving out next week." Oh really? He then regaled me with the entire story which involved a variety of things including an exterminator, paint thickness, and law firms. My wife and I were both able to glean essentially the same information. However if I had approached him and said, without any warning, "I bet you and our landlord are having one heckuva legal squabble," he probably would have punched me in the nose. I also believe that the ease with which I was able to get the whole story out of him suggests that had we interacted more it would have been I scooping my wife and not the other way around. These two approaches to gathering information are akin to the difference between following

As I'm sure you know, former NSA analyst Russell Tice revealed that the agency spied on journalists and ordinary Americans - not just communications between the U.S. and overseas. Speaking on the Keith Olbermann show on MSNBC, Tice said: "The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications," he said. "Faxes, phone calls and their computer communications. … They monitored all communications." He made a further appearance on Olbermann Thursday (view above), in which he said that the NSA combined these illegal wiretaps with credit card and financial data. ""This [information] could sit there for ten years and then potentially it marries up with something else and ten years from now they get put on a no-fly list and they, of course, won't have a clue why," Tice said. "This is garnered from algorithms that have been put together to try to just dream-up scenarios that might be information that is associated with how a terrorist could operate," Tice said. "And once that information gets to the NSA, and they start to put it through the filters there . . . and they start looking for word-recognition, if someone just talked about the daily news and mentioned something about the Middle East they could easily be brought to the forefront of having that little flag put by their name that says 'potential terrorist'." Why were they monitoring reporters? New York Times reporter James Risen told Olbermann he thought it was a plot "to have a chilling effect on potential whistleblowers in the government to make them realize that there's a Big Brother out there that will get them if they step out of line."