Survey data on doctoral education trends were difficult to access.

Since 1958, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has collected annual data on the number and characteristics of individuals receiving research doctoral degrees from all accredited U.S. institutions. These data come from large-scale surveys, including:

• The Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED)
• The Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR)

These restricted-use data are vital to education and labor-force planners in government and academia. Results are used to assess the characteristics of the U.S.-trained doctoral scientists and engineers as well as trends in doctoral education and degrees. In the first decades of these surveys, researchers were required to travel to a federal facility to access and analyze the data. Later, data became available on CD-ROMs through a license application process, but researchers could open the content only in a locked room subject to unannounced inspection.

NORC made the data available to researchers through our secure Data Enclave.

NORC leveraged our market-defining environment, the NORC Data Enclave^®, to create NSF’s custom Secure Data Access Facility (SDAF). The SDAF provides NSF and its principal statistical agency­—the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES)—with a secure, centralized, and user-friendly way to connect researchers with these rich data sets. The end-to-end solution also features a tailored onboarding portal and managed services, including dedicated user support.

In 2019, researchers migrated to SDAF’s remote access model, allowing convenient access to the data nationwide through a virtual workspace. Authorized researchers securely analyze and collaborate on NSF/NCSES data using a host of powerful tools available within the platform.