New York Federal Statistical Research Data Center | Cornell Center for Social Sciences

The New York Federal Statistical Research Data Center (NYRDC) is part of the Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) network. The acronym FSRDC is used to refer to the network as a whole, while each individual location is referred to as an RDC.

The Federal Statistical Research Data Centers are partnerships between federal statistical agencies and leading research institutions. There are currently more than 30 Research Data Center (RDC) locations. The RDCs are secure facilities managed by the Census Bureau that provide access to a range of restricted-use microdata for statistical purposes only. Researchers must have an approved project before conducting research at an RDC. For a brief and informative overview of the FSRDC program, view the following video:

The NYRDC operates three labs, one at Baruch College-CUNY, one at Cornell University as part of the Cornell Center for Social Sciences (CCSS), and one at Yale University. The NYRDC is a consortium of 14 universities and research institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Institutional membership in the NYRDC consortium covers access fees for faculty members, graduate students, and researchers affiliated with member institutions.¹ Researchers at non-member institutions may access the NYRDC laboratories for a fee. Contact the NYRDC Executive Director at the location where you would like to conduct the project to discuss access fees. Please note that in some cases the federal agency whose data is being used by a project may charge a project fee. These fees are separate from NYRDC access fees.

For information regarding other RDC locations, data available through the FSRDCs, and the process for developing a proposal to use restricted-access data at an RDC, visit https://www.census.gov/about/adrm/fsrdc.html. ResearchDataGov offers additional information about data available through the FSRDCs. Prospective researchers can learn more about the research that can be done using Census data by browsing the Center for Economic Studies (CES) Working Paper Series and looking at project metadata. This includes a list of publications that resulted from RDC projects since 2019 as well as abstracts of active and completed RDC projects. Finally, recordings from the FSRDC Presentation Series are available at https://www.census.gov/data/academy/webinars/2022/fsrdc-series.html. These are excellent examples of recent RDC research, and presenters also include tips for working in the RDC.

1. Institutional members may require researchers from their institution to contribute to the institutional membership fee.