Using SSB:

The GSF and Completed Data implicates contain personally identifiable information protected by Titles 13, 26, and 42 and cannot be accessed without Census Bureau Special Sworn Status nor outside of Census Bureau facilities. The SSB files, however, have been cleared by the Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board, SSA, and IRS for use by individuals without Census Bureau Special Sworn Status and outside of Census Bureau facilities.

Researchers interested in using the SSB can submit an application to the Census Bureau. The application form and instructions can be downloaded from http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/sipp/methodology/sipp-synthetic-beta-data-product.html. Applications will be judged solely on feasability of the proposed project (i.e., that the necessary variables are available on the SSB). Once an application has been accepted, the new user will be given an account on a server where the data can be accessed and analyzed. While no SSB data downloads are permitted at this time, users do not have to operate behind the Census Bureau firewall to access this server.

The SSB is designed to be analytically valid in that sense that point estimates should be unbiased and estimated variances should lead to inferences similar to those that would be drawn from an identical analysis on the Completed Data implicates. Initial tests of analytic validity of the SSB have been promising. All SSB users are invited to help further test the analytic validity of the SSB by submitting programs used to analyze the SSB to be run on the Completed Data and/or Gold Standard files. Users need only inform Census Bureau staff of the location on the server of such programs and work with Census Bureau staff to ensure that the programs run without error. Census Bureau staff will run the programs on the confidential data and release to the user resulting output that are cleared for release by the Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board. In order to evaluate the effects of the data synthesis separate from the effect of imputing missing data, comparisons should be made between results from the SSB and the Completed Data. To evaluate the effects of missing data imputation, comparisons should be made between results from the Completed Data and the Gold Standard.

Protocol for Validation of Results:

Census will validate results obtained from the SSB on the internal, confidential version of these data (Completed Gold Standard Files). Users who wish to obtain validated results should follow the protocol outlined here. The restricted access site will provide SAS and Stata analysis software and a computing environment similar to the one used to analyze the confidential Completed Gold Standard data on Census Bureau internal computers. Researchers should follow the Census Bureau programming requirements described in SSB Validation Request Guidelines to ensure that the programs will successfully transfer to internal Census computers for validation. Researchers should plan to share their results and programs from the synthetic data analysis with Census, ORES/SSA and SOI/IRS. After programs have successfully run without error on the synthetic data, researchers may request that Census run these programs on the Completed Gold Standard Files. Only programs successfully run without error on the SDS will be eligible to be run on the confidential data by Census staff. Any programs that produce errors on the Completed Gold Standard Files will be returned to users for correction. Once an analysis has been repeated on the Completed Gold Standard File, the results will be reviewed by Census staff for disclosure concerns. Researchers should familiarize themselves with standard Census disclosure rules for outside projects (See the RDC Researcher Handbook here) and should fill out the appropriate memo documenting the requested output (see RDC Disclosure Request Memo). Data products and output approved by Census staff will be released to the users, ORES/SSA, and SOI/IRS. The validation process can be accomplished in as little as one week for simple results that are generated by clean code and have no disclosure issues. However if the code does not run properly, the sample sizes are too small, or the researcher does not accurately fill out the disclosure memo, the process can take much longer. Census makes no guarantee on the length of time between submission of programs and the release of results from the confidential data. For more information about the validation process, including advice on how to make the process go smoothly and quickly, please see SSB Validation Request Guidelines.