Upcoming Events
December 9, 11am – 5pm
Toward a Vision for a New Data Infrastructure for Federal Statistics and Social and Economic Research in the 21st Century
Workshop 1A and 1B: The Scope, Components, and Characteristics of a 21st Century Data Infrastructure
Register
December 8, 12:00 – 1:30pm
The American Statistical Association will hold the 2021 ASA Links Lecture on Wednesday, December 8. Lisa Mirel of the National Center for Health Statistics will lecture on “Advancing Health Data Linkages: A Roadmap for Evidence Building.” Jeri Mulrow, Westat, will relate the points in the lecture to the production of official statistics. The lecture series celebrates Constance Citro, Robert Groves, and Fritz Scheuren, who have been critical links in envisioning the future of official statistics.
People News
CNSTAT Welcomes Joshua Lang
Joshua Lang is a new senior program assistant with the Committee on National Statistics. He graduated in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from Stevenson University, where he tutored and coached students through Calculus courses and participated in two research-based summer internships with faculty. Joshua researched topics on probability theory, information theory, music theory, graph theory, and combinatorics.
Recent Events and Reports
Improving Consent and Response Rates in Longitudinal Studies on Aging Workshop, September 27-28, 2021
Video and other materials available from this site.
Research and Development, Global Value Chains, and Globalization Measurement Public Workshop, May 5-7, 2021
Video and other materials available from this site.
CNSTAT Seminar: Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency, April 21, 2021
Video available here.
Transparency in Statistical Information for the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and All Federal Statistical Agencies, a consensus report chaired by Daniel Kasprzyk (NORC) and sponsored by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), was released November 18, 2021. Free PDFs are available here.
Widely available, trustworthy government statistics are essential for policy makers and program administrators at all levels of government, for private sector decision makers, for researchers, and for the media and the public. In the United States, principal statistical agencies as well as units and programs in many other agencies produce various key statistics in areas ranging from the science and engineering enterprise to education and economic welfare. Official statistics are often the result of complex data collection, processing, and estimation methods. These methods can be challenging for agencies to document and for users to understand. The goal of transparency is to enable consumers of federal statistics to accurately understand and evaluate how estimates are generated.
Transparency in Statistical Information for the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and All Federal Statistical Agencies examines the degree to which the information currently provided by NCSES and the other federal statistical agencies is consistent with the goals of being transparent. The panel identified best practices that agencies can use to determine the extent to which their policies are consistent with transparency. The report also explores how NCSES could work with other federal statistical agencies to facilitate the adoption of currently available documentation and archiving standards and tools.
Building Data Capacity for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research: Interim Report 2—Data Standards, Methods, and Policy, was released October 27, 2021. Free PDFs are available here.
Building Data Capacity for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research: Interim Report 1—Looking Ahead at Data Needs was released September 10, 2021. Free PDFs are available here.
Both are consensus reports chaired by George Isham (HealthPartners Institute) and sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), ASPE, in partnership with other agencies and divisions of DHHS, coordinates a portfolio of projects that build data capacity for conducting patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR). PCOR focuses on producing scientific evidence on the effectiveness of prevention and treatment options to inform the health care decisions of patients, families, and health care providers, taking into consideration the preferences, values, and questions patients face when making health care choices. ASPE asked the National Academies to appoint a consensus study committee to identify issues critical to the continued development of the data infrastructure for PCOR over the next decade.
As part of its information gathering activities, the committee organized three workshops to collect input from stakeholders on the PCOR data infrastructure. The first interim report focused on data user needs over the next decade; the second interim report focused on data standards methods, and policies that could make the PCOR data more useful in the years ahead.