Our Mission

Increase the impact of NICHD-funded research within the scientific mission of the NICHD-Population Dynamics Branch by providing research infrastructure to:

• Promote data sharing
• Support the development of procedures and technologies for data sharing
• Disseminate best practices in data sharing
• Provide a resource that catalogs NICHD-funded data available for secondary analysis
• Promote the secondary analysis of data collected through NICHD grants to research teams outside the original grantees

Major scientific innovations/contributions

The major scientific innovations/contributions that will enable DSDR to achieve these goals are to:

• Put into place a leadership team that bring new ideas and seeks to create a stronger identity for DSDR and is fully engaged in keeping abreast of developments and innovation in the field

• Build a strong advisory role to the scientific community in key areas such as genomic data, deductive disclosure risk and data harmonization

• Strengthen our capacity to do sophisticated deductive disclosure risk analysis

• Develop formal mechanisms by which ICPSR leadership receives feedback regarding innovations and ideas for improvement to existing ICPSR data dissemination architecture

• Build an electronic catalog that encompasses a wide spectrum of NICHD-funded data collection studies and that promotes data sharing

Data curation and dissemination

DSDR will continue to curate and disseminate data through its website and will also continue to process applications for access to restricted data archived through the DSDR project.

NICHD-funded population centers

Services provided by the DSDR projects are particularly targeted for the NICHD-funded population centers.