SAS Rules and Requirements for Accessing Public Use Data

The SAS program rules and requirements described on this page have been put in place to protect the privacy and confidentiality of research subjects participating in the CSDE project. The SAS Rules explain what restrictions you will need to observe in writing programs to be run against the data files you are approved to use. Other information you will need for writing your SAS programs, e.g., merge variables and file and path names are provided in the technical guides, codebooks, and sample programs.

System Requirements

IRP currently runs SAS Version 8.2. Please take care that your SAS programs are compatible with this system. SAS libname statements specific to the operating system on which your programs will run have been precoded and will be made available through a SAS %include statement. For more details, please see the sample programs for the data files you will be using.

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Consulting Needs

IRP cannot take responsibility for training or consulting in the use of the SAS programming language. However, questions about the data or access problems may be addressed to IRP staff at CSDEpublicuse@ssc.wisc.edu.

SAS Rules

To protect the confidentiality and privacy of research subjects, IRP cannot permit you to run programs that allow you to view values for individual cases. For example, SAS programs containing PROC PRINT, cross tabulations with PROC FREQ, or the PUT statement will not be run. Similarly, running frequencies on "continuous" or "restricted categorical" variables is not permitted. For your convenience, "continuous" and "restricted categorical" variables have been identified in the codebooks.

IRP will examine SAS programs both electronically and manually to make sure the rules have been followed. If a SAS program is found to have coding that could compromise the privacy of any research subject, you will be contacted and asked to change the sections in question. If IRP must repeatedly request a user to make programs compliant, it may be necessary to deny further access to CSDE data or revoke approval for access.

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Program Processing

After reviewing your program, IRP staff will submit the program against the data files you have been approved to use. Once your job has run, IRP staff will review your log and listing files to ensure that the privacy of research subjects has not been compromised. If all is well, your program output files will be transmitted to you via e-mail.

Since IRP's Public Use Data Access system is not yet fully automated, we cannot guarantee immediate turnaround. We will do our best to process your programs within 24 hours, but jobs will not be run during the evenings, weekends, or holidays.

Specific instructions on how and where to submit your SAS programs will be provided upon approval of your CSDE data access request.

Contact Information

Requests, questions, or general communication about the CSDE public use data may be sent to:

CSDEpublicuse@ssc.wisc.edu

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