SED Confidentiality Brochure

The Survey of Earned Doctorates is conducted by
NORC at the University of Chicago for
these federal agencies:

More Information Available
Publications from the
Survey of Earned Doctorates use aggregated
data in which a person cannot be identified.
If you have any questions or concerns about
the survey, please contact:

The National Science Foundation
National Center for Science
and Engineering Statistics (NCSES)

The National Institutes of Health

The U.S. Department of Education

Mark K. Fiegener, PhD
Project Manager, Survey of Earned Doctorates
National Science Foundation
National Center for Science
and Engineering Statistics (NCSES)
4201 Wilson Blvd., Room 965
Arlington, VA 22230
Email: mfiegene@nsf.gov
For information on completing
the survey, please contact:
Kristy Webber
NORC at the University of Chicago
55 East Monroe Street, 30th Floor
Chicago, IL 60603
800-248-8649

The U.S. Department of Agriculture

Phone
800-684-0704

The National Endowment for the Humanities

SED

Survey of Earned Doctorates

How the SED
Keeps Your
Information

Strictly
Conf idential

Fax
Sponsored by:
4800-sed@norc.uchicago.edu

The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration

E-mail

NSF, NIH, USED
USDA, NEH, NASA

Your information
is kept strictly
confidential.
Privacy Policy
The information provided on the Survey of Earned
Doctorates (SED) questionnaire remains confidential and is
safeguarded in accordance with the Privacy Act of 1974 and
the NSF Act of 1950, as amended. The survey data are
reported only in aggregate form or in a manner that does
not identify information about an individual.
The federal agencies and the data collection contractor for
the SED take the strongest measures to safeguard respondent
confidentiality. All staff members sign binding confidentiality
pledges. All processing facilities and computer systems are
carefully designed and continuously tested to safeguard the
information provided by institutions and respondents.

Your data are used
for statistical purposes only.

Security Safeguard
Procedures
Only two groups can receive individual-identifiable
data from the SED project:
• The SED Federal Sponsors
(for program evaluation)
• Graduate School Deans
(for their own graduates only)
Confidentiality safeguards prohibit the use of
data for commercial purposes or for investigating
an individual respondent or institution. Any
independent researcher or contractor for the Federal
agencies that performs analyses of the data must sign
legally binding organizational and individual Data
Use Agreements certifying that the institution will

Social Security
Number
In response to privacy concerns, only the last four
digits of your Social Security Number are
requested. Additionally, we would like to reassure
you that even your partial SSN information is kept
strictly confidential and is not used outside the project
under ANY conditions. The purpose of the partial
Social Security Number is for survey quality control
by the contractor (NORC) and for statistical purposes
in program evaluation by the SED Federal sponsors.
We ask for your partial SSN for three specific purposes:
1. The major Federal agencies that sponsor the
SED use the partial SSN to match the SED
data to information on Federal funding
support for graduate education. Congress and
the Federal agencies require that information
on the effectiveness of Federal programs be
used in the funding process for these programs.
Federal programs conduct program evaluations
by using the SED to determine, for example,
the percent of participants in a program such
as the NSF Graduate Fellowship Program who
have completed the doctorate. The U.S.
Department of Education has used the SED to
evaluate several graduate student aid programs,

only use their data for statistical purposes and that
the security of the data will be protected. Penalties
for breaching these agreements range upward from
$250,000, and audits of licensed users are regularly
conducted by the Federal government. Furthermore,
NCSES staff reviews all analyses from researchers to
ensure that there is no risk of an identity breach. If
an analysis is found to have an identity disclosure
risk, NCSES staff works with the researcher to
remove this risk.
Similarly, Graduate Deans must sign an agreement
that they will only use the data for statistical purposes,
and will safeguard the confidentiality of the responses.
SED staff not only secures the survey materials and
data, but also removes identifying information from
any data and analyses provided to outside sources.
Only data aggregated to levels that will not allow
the identification of individual respondents are
released for publication.

and the National Institutes of Health has used
it to evaluate its graduate trainee programs.
2. The National Science Foundation conducts
a follow-up survey of a sample of doctorate
recipients, the Survey of Doctorate Recipients
(SDR), and the partial SSN may be used to
find the mailing addresses of sampled
individuals two or more years after they
completed their doctoral programs. This
follow-up survey is completely voluntary.
3. We use the partial SSN number to make sure
that we do not have duplicate records for any
doctorate recipient in the historical data file.
Each year we receive several questionnaires
from individuals who had completed the
SED in an earlier year, when they had
expected to graduate. The partial SSN is the
best way to locate such matching records
across survey rounds, as well as to crossreference individuals completing a second
research doctorate.
Legally, your Social Security Number is solicited
under the National Science Foundation Act of
1950, as amended; provision of it is voluntary.