|
Conducting
Research at the CCRDC
Overview of CCRDC Operations | Proposal Submission | Pricing Policy
| Dissertation Fellowships
| Steps for Approved Projects
Overview of CCRDC Operations
Research projects conducted at the California Census
Research Data
Center undergo a
rigorous selection process. All research is conducted in secure laboratories
located at UCLA and UC Berkeley that are operated in partnership with the
U.S. Census Bureau.
Submitted proposals are reviewed both by members of the academic community
and by researchers at the U.S. Census Bureau. Reviews cover project
feasibility, scientific merit, disclosure risks, the need for non-public
data, and the potential of the project to benefit the Census Bureau. In order to move forward, projects
must be approved both by the Center for Economic Studies and the CCRDC. Proposals requesting to use economic
data will require a separate review by the IRS after CES approval. Proposals to use demographic
administrative records must be approved by the Census Bureau's Administrative
Records Steering Committee. Proposals to use Census Bureau data that is
sponsored by another agency must also be approved by that agency. The review
process generally takes approximately two months, although projects involving
sponsored data sets or administrative records may require additional time for
review.
Proposal Submission
The first step of the research process is submission of a proposal. The Center for Economic Studies of the
U.S. Census Bureau provides the official proposal guidelines
for all RDCs. Researchers
considering submitting a proposal to the California Census
Research Data
Center should follow
these guidelines. Before writing
a research proposal, researchers must contact the RDC administrator at the
CCRDC site where the project would take place. The proposal review process is lengthy
and rigorous, and the RDC administrators can assist researchers in preparing
strong proposals. The RDC administrators should also review drafts of
proposals prior to submission. Researchers who wish to submit proposals to
the CCRDC should contact the appropriate RDC administrator listed below. For more details on the proposal
submission process, click here.
|
For UC Berkeley
Proposals:
Ritch Milby, RDC Administrator
UC DATA/CCRDC
UC Berkeley
2538 Channing Way #5100
Berkeley, CA 94720-5100
Phone: 510-643-2262
Fax: 510-643-8292
E-mail: rmilby@ccrdc.ucla.edu
|
|
For UCLA proposals:
Rebecca Acosta, RDC Administrator
UCLA/CCRDC
4250 Public Policy Building
Box 951484
Los Angeles, CA
90095
Phone: (310) 267-5191
FAX: (310) 206-4453
E-mail: rjacosta@ccrdc.ucla.edu
|
Pricing Policy
Access to the laboratories of the California Census
Research Data
Center is not free. The
pricing policy outlines the cost of access. CCRDC offers dissertation research fellowships for
graduate students.
Steps for
Approved Projects
Once a project has been approved, researchers must obtain Special Sworn
Status, sign a legal agreement that stipulates the conditions under which
researchers may use the Research
Data Center,
and take some required training on awareness of the Census confidentiality
rules and Information Security.
Researchers are provided workspaces and personal workstations inside the
secure laboratory. Currently the lab computers are LINUX-based and include
SAS, Stata, and OpenOffice software as well as various LINUX-based text
editors. The laboratories are
accessible 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, to researchers with approved
projects. During normal business hours, computing and research support is
provided by the full-time RDC Administrator.
All research conducted at the California
Census Research
Data Center
falls under Title 13 regulations. Federal law prohibits disclosure of
information contained in data prepared by the Bureau of the Census. During
each research project, researchers must collaborate with the RDC
Administrator on disclosure analysis. No output may be removed from the CCRDC
laboratories without approval from the RDC Administrator and the Center for
Economic Studies. At the end of their project, researchers
MUST provide the Census Bureau with a documentation of the how their project
provided the promised benefits to the Census Bureau (or why the benefits
were not able to be provided). In
addition, researchers are required to provide documentation of all programs
developed to conduct the research and provide CES with a draft working paper.
All data remain in the possession of the Census Bureau.
For further description of the above steps, click
here.
|
