Regency EF
Developing a Classification System Within a Federal Statistical Agency (304032)
*Darius Singpurwalla, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics
Keywords: classification, data collection, reporting, questionnaire design
The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) is the federal statistical agency that is responsible for informing policy makers about the science and engineering (S&E) enterprise both in the United States and internationally. As part of this mandate, NCSES collects information from institutions that contribute to the S&E enterprise through surveys. While NCSES surveys are designed to collect information on the same broad topic (the S&E enterprise), each survey has its own nuances that lead to differences in how these variables are reported across our surveys.
To better serve our user-community, NCSES embarked on a massive undertaking to attempt to better understand what caused these differences in variables across surveys and, whenever possible, harmonize these variables across the different surveys. This poster is designed to summarize this harmonization process. Based on the lessons learned from this project, the poster will provide interested viewers with a generic roadmap as to how one might foster communication and consensus within an organization.