Proposal Review and Committee Decision

Proposal Review

The review takes about six to eight weeks.

1. On receipt of your proposal, the RDC Director assigns an RDC Analyst to work with you.
2. The RDC Analyst reviews the proposal for completeness and feasibility and works with you to make any necessary changes or additions.
3. The RDC Analyst distributes the proposal to the Review Committee, which includes the RDC Analyst, one or more representatives from the data system, and the Confidentiality Officer.
4. The Review Committee examines the proposal for:
   • Appropriateness and availability of the chosen data
   • Disclosure risk
   • Technical feasibility
   • Public health benefit and consistency with the data owner’s mission

Review Committee Decision

The Review Committee decision options include:

• Approve
  • Approval of an application does not mean that NCHS endorses the merit of the proposed research or its substantive, methodological, theoretical, or policy relevance.
  • NCHS approval reflects the judgment that this research, as described in the proposal, is an appropriate use of the requested data and that using the services of the RDC to complete the project is feasible.
  • Approval of a proposal does not explicitly or implicitly guarantee that all output generated by the analysis will be released. Output that poses a disclosure risk will be suppressed.
• Revise and resubmit
  • Often, researchers are asked to revise and resubmit after the first review. If this is the case, we will work with you to help you revise your proposal to comply with our guidelines.
  • You should always indicate the Revised Date 00/00/000 on the first page and highlight any changes when resubmitting your proposal.
• Disapprove