Part of accessing an FSRDC is identifying, developing, submitting, and getting approval of a project that uses restricted-use data. Prior to developing a proposal, researchers should consult with the KCFSRDC Census Administrator (shawn.ratcliff@census.gov) to make initial contact and discuss preliminary proposal ideas. The proposal review process is lengthy and rigorous, below is the average timeline of initial contact to first stepping into the lab:
Proposal Development Step | Estimated Time |
1. Contact RDC Administrator to discuss project ideas and identify project. | ~1-2 months |
2. Read the RDC Research Proposal Guidelines and develop a 2-3 page proposal. (Submit through ResearchDataGov and e-mail to your Administrator. | 2-3 weeks |
3. Apply comments and go through iterations of edits for proposal with Administrator until a final proposal is complete. | ~1-2 months |
4. Submit the proposal for Census Review, where a few internal Census employees will read and provide feedback on whether to approve the proposal. | ~3 months |
4a. If denied, apply comments and prepare to resubmit the proposal. Proposal will go back for Census review. | ~1-2 months |
4b. If using FTI or other IRS data, the proposal will go through IRS review after approved by Census (can apply for Special Sworn Status during this review time).* | ~2-3 months |
5. Once project is approved, apply for Special Sworn Status (detailed below) and complete all necessary pre-RDC trainings. | ~2-3 months |
6. Gain access to the RDC, complete RDC-specific trainings, and begin working on your project. | ~2 weeks |
**The Administrator will discuss with you whether or not your project requires this round of review and the additional steps necessary. |
Each of these are listed below with a brief description on the information that should be included:
1.) Introduction
Each project will provide an overview of the project that will demonstrate the intellectual merit of the project, provide motivation for the major research questions/aims, and discuss, briefly, the benefits to Census (discussed in more detail below). These introduction should provide information in a way that does not inundate reviewers with all possible citations and research on a topic (i.e., a literature review) but rather as much necessary as necessary to motivate the aims and identify the gap in the research that will be filled. This section will briefly discuss the analytic method and data sources, but later sections will provide more detail about these.
2.) Methodology/Analytic Approach
During the review process, reviewers will look for feasibility of the project – both with data availability and methodological approach. Therefore, this section is will be detailed. Specifically, the Methodology section should include how your key measures will be operationalized, what datasets they will come from, and what methods you will use to address each of the focal aims. While the format is author-specific, this section should avoid surface-level explanations and equation expressions, but instead should situate the methodology within the substantive framing of the project.
3.) Data
This section is where you will discuss the need for the requested Census-provided datasets and list all of the datasets and their respective years for which you want access. Additionally, this is where you will discuss if you will bring in any external data. For example, publicly-available Census data is not accessible in the RDC. Instead, researchers will provide the public-use data and merge it to the restricted-use data. How data will be merged is also discussed in this section.
4.) Project Output and Disclosure Risk
Here is where you will discuss what types of information you will produce and use in external documents, such as conference presentations, working papers, or journal publications. Depending on your analyses, you project may have a higher risk of disclosure and you will discuss what will be done to avoid potential disclosure.
5.) Project Duration and Funding Source
Finally, you will discuss how long you will take to complete the project – the average timeline is 5 years. Additionally, you will indicate how the project will be funded. For some researchers, they are a member of a university or organization that is part of a consortium that support the FSRDC. For those that do not fall into that category, you will work with the FSRDC Director to determine potential fees.
For more information on NCHS, AHRS, BLS, and BEA proposals, please see the following links:
To obtain SSS, researchers must be:
Once these things are completed, the researcher is considered an uncompensated employee of the U.S. Census Bureau. As part of this, the researcher agrees to protect the data for which they are accessing for life (Title 13 U.S.C. 23 (c)).