Connecting Researchers with Data: Discovery, Documentation, Access and Security

Abstract

The Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER), Cornell University and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), German Federal Employment Agency are collaborating to expand use of IAB’s confidential Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB). DDI 2.5 is used to enable researchers to discover the files by means of variable level searching in a repository of metadata on U.S. and German labor market related data files. The repository is the Comprehensive Extensible Data Documentation and Access Repository (CED2AR) being developed by researchers at Cornell University with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation. CED2AR provides researchers access to machine-readable codebooks with variable characteristics thus enabling researchers to develop detailed proposals for access to these data that are submitted to IAB. Researchers with approved projects are able to access and analyze the data using the Cornell Restricted Access Data Center (CRADC), a remote access virtual data enclave using remote desktop protocol. In the initial testing phase several researchers located in Europe and North America are successfully accessing and analyzing the Scientific Use Files of the SIAB. The project is well on its way to realizing the goal of wider access to researchers while improving secure management of confidential data.