The phrase "absence of identifiers" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts where you want to describe a situation or condition where identifiers are missing or not present.
Example: "The absence of identifiers in the dataset made it difficult to track individual responses."
Alternatives: "lack of identifiers" or "nonexistence of identifiers".
Because of regularities in human behavior, patterns in data exhaust can be used to 'fingerprint' an individual – enabling potential reidentification even in the absence of explicit identifiers or quasi-identifiers.
[R]esearch shows that human mobility patterns are highly predictable and that these patterns have unique signatures, making them highly identifiable– even in the absence of associated identifiers or hashes.
In the absence of definite identifiers, for example when only the gene names were provided in the published signature tables, corresponding gene identifiers were acquired manually.
This can be achieved by common linking patient identifiers or health information; nevertheless discrepancies can occur owing to errors based on data entry issues or the absence of specific identifiers unique to the patients.
This was due to the absence of unique identifiers that allow merging of female and male files of DHS.
Given the absence of geographic identifiers for the mobile numbers, no quota was applied to the mobile sample and state of residence was established on contact.
Due to absence of personal identifiers in the surveillance data and aggregate nature of the data, the IRB waived requirement of informed consent.
Due to the absence of personal identifiers in the dataset, and the fact that the study involved the use of a pre-existing dataset, the study received expedited approval from the Research Ethics Board of the Hospital for Sick Children.
Human blood was obtained commercially as a laboratory reagent (and in the absence of all identifiers) from BioreclamationIVT (http://www.bioreclamation.com) and therefore did not require institutional review by an ethics committee at NMRC.
While the absence of personal identifiers restricted our ability to account for some potential confounders/effect modifiers, hospitalization data obtained in a mandatory manner for a number of years, because of the large numbers involved, has considerable potential for generating and testing hypotheses regarding the causes of disease [ 28].
In absence of patient identifiers, the patients for whom data has been submitted by our hospital to the DSCA in 2011 are matched with the patients from the EMR based on their gender, year of birth and operation date as well as sets of procedures that they underwent.
