Obtaining Special Sworn Status
Researchers are required to obtain special sworn status prior to beginning research at a Federal Statistical Research Data Center. To obtain special sworn status, researchers must be fingerprinted, make a sworn statement in the presence of a notary public, and provide additional information for background checks. Once completed, this process establishes the researcher as a temporary uncompensated employee of the U.S. Census Bureau. While working on projects at the RDC, researchers should consider themselves to be temporary uncompensated Census Bureau employees.

Researcher Agreements
Researchers with approved projects sign an agreement with the University of California and the Center for Economic Studies that stipulates the conditions under which data may be accessed at the RDC. Any violation of the terms of this agreement will result in the termination of the project.

Disclosure Analysis
All statistical output generated in the RDC that researchers would like to have released must undergo disclosure analysis prior to removal. No printed or other output may be removed from the RDC without approval. Coordinating disclosure analysis with the RDC administrator with sufficient lead time before conference presentations or submission of journal articles is the responsibility of the researcher.

Post-Project Certification
All researchers submit with their proposal a description of the benefits their project will provide to the Census Bureau.  At the end of the every project, a write-up must describe how the promised benefits were provided (or in some cases, why the researchers were not able to provide them).  Please remember that, under the U.S. Code, Title 13, Chapter 5, the Census Bureau is allowed to give the confidential data to researchers only if the project will provide suitable benefits to the Bureau. Thus, documenting the benefits your project provided is important. Researchers not completing this description of benefits will not be approved for future projects.

Discussion Papers
Researchers are required to submit to the Center for Economic Studies a working paper describing the results of work completed at the RDC. Submission of a working paper does not preclude publication elsewhere. If a working paper has been published elsewhere, researchers are encouraged to contact CES with the new citation, and the working paper will be removed from circulation.  For reference, please see the CES Working Papers Series.

Disclaimer
A disclaimer must be included with all researchers' publications resulting from use of data at the California Census Research Data Center. Details about the disclaimer will be provided with each release of disclosure-reviewed results.

 

 

Pricing
For pricing and fee-for-use information, please contact Matthew Freedman at matthew.freedman@uci.edu.