Protected Attributes

Sensitive attributes

Before measuring potential biases, we must consider what attributes can be a subject of discrimination. Some of them can be defined by law (when there is a related regulation, e.g., credit scoring). We call them protected or sensitive attributes and define them as attributes we don’t want to discriminate against. But, of course, the decision if a specific attribute is sensitive may depend on the particular context. That’s why a good understanding of the problem is crucial.

Protected attributes can be included in the data directly; features like age, gender, and marital status should grab our attention. We should proceed with them carefully as a potential source of model bias. However, even if such an attribute is not visible for the model, it still can have an unwanted impact. Let’s consider the zip code. Assuming it is not a protected attribute by itself, it can be heavily correlated with ...