The National Academies Press

Currently Skimming:

Pages 39-54

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.

From page 39... ... Most federal statistical agencies have developed their own statistical standards and reporting guidelines in support of greater transparency in their programs. For example, the U.S. Read the entire page →
From page 40... ... We asked these individuals about their practices regarding the documentation of their data collections, the archiving of the resulting input datasets and resulting official statistics, and the documentation of statistical methods used to treat the data and to produce the indicated official statistics. RESPONSES TO THE INFORMAL QUESTIONNAIRE By requesting that program chiefs or other informed staff respond to these informal questionnaires, the committee was able to get a rough sense of what the current practice is, both internally and externally, regarding the documentation of the data collection methods, the data treatments used, BOX 2-1 Programs That Responded to Informal Panel Questionnaire 1. Read the entire page →
From page 41... ... The input data files retained were generally the edited files used as input to produce the associated official estimates, they said, but some programs retained the raw data files and other intermediate files prior to the production of the final input data. There often were internal guidelines for what and how to save but, respondents said, there were typically no guidelines on the use of metadata standards.4 Some agencies pointed out that there was no repository on their own (internal) Read the entire page →
From page 42... ... Otherwise, the adop tion of these standards or other metadata standards seems not to be typical of most federal statistical agencies. One agency expressed concern that to adopt these standards would obligate the agency to do so for the entire historical series to ensure back ward comparability. Read the entire page →
From page 43... ... The wording of some questions often made implicit assumptions about the data collection or the methods that made the questions difficult for respondents to interpret in 5 The federal statistical agencies have written a number of excellent technical reports and handbooks for various official estimates that are based on the data collected from surveys. A key example of this is U.S. Read the entire page →
From page 44... ... Finally, we asked about machine-readable metadata standards only with regard to nonsurvey data, which was an error. Given these caveats, in combination with our knowledge of what OMB requires, the existence of several existing guidelines about documentation -- in particular that of the Census Bureau -- our examination of the Web pages for the same programs, and finally our direct knowledge of the documentation that certain programs release, we believe we have a reasonable idea of the range of documentation that is currently provided both internally and externally to an agency. Read the entire page →
From page 45... ... , so these documents were often only a single click away from the landing page. Conclusion 2.1: Documentation of data collection methods, data treat ments, and estimation methods by federal statistical agencies, while in need of some improvement, is generally fairly complete with respect to what is available internally to an agency. Read the entire page →
From page 46... ... Further, access to input datasets using secure avenues varies substan tially across agencies. CHALLENGES THAT ARISE IN IMPLEMENTING TRANSPARENCY AND REPRODUCIBILITY There are challenges and costs associated with the use of increased transparency. Read the entire page →
From page 47... ... As a prime example, data from individuals on federal household surveys include PII and therefore are not shareable unless care is taken to virtually eliminate the chances of a disclosure. Also, if federal statistical agencies use administrative data at the national or state level to develop official statistics, there are often laws forbidding any sharing of such data. Read the entire page →
From page 48... ... The statistical agencies do not receive raw responses if the data are collected under the Census Bureau's Title 13 regulation. Instead, the Census Bureau provides the official estimates that are estimated from the raw data. Read the entire page →
From page 49... ... Commercial entities also can provide datasets at a price that might be used to construct target populations for sampling. In such cases, contractors and commercial vendors may provide their algorithms or data to federal statistical agencies for a specific use for a limited period of time during which they are not to be shared. Read the entire page →
From page 51... ... That implies both selecting which objects will be preserved and which will not and taking actions to maintain the possibility of access to those objects that are preserved. Storage alone is not necessarily preservation, and this is especially true in an age in which many objects are "born digital." The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Read the entire page →
From page 52... ... Transparency is thus also critical to public participation in and provision of information to the federal statistical system, improving data quality and reducing the costs of data collection. To provide this transparency, it is necessary to archive -- to preserve and make accessible -- the full data life cycle, including questionnaires, metadata about the data collection process, metadata about the transformation of raw data into data products, and the data products themselves. Read the entire page →
From page 53... ... To retain trust in official statistics, the statistical agencies need to decide according to strictly professional considerations, includ ing scientific principles and professional ethics, on the methods and procedures for the collection, processing, storage and presentation of statistical data. Principle 3. Read the entire page →
From page 54... ... Because digital data can be altered in ways that are not transparent, it is now often not possible to find out precisely what was published at a particular point in time. More generally, there is no systematic preservation of the public-use digital data products of the federal statistical system. Read the entire page →

From page 39...

... Most federal statistical agencies have developed their own statistical standards and reporting guidelines in support of greater transparency in their programs. For example, the U.S.