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Briefing
Discussing Data: The Elevator Pitch
Researchers and custodians of data are often tasked with explaining their data to unfamiliar audiences. There exists a knowledge gap that can be challenging, particularly when attempting to communicate research that uses complex or less well-known data. This paper describes an “elevator pitch” that can be used to quickly and efficiently present core characteristics of data. Specifically, it outlines seven core characteristics that can be used to create such a pitch. Additionally, it provides examples of how this compact description can be integrated into research papers, presentations, or ...
Briefing
Federal Reserve District County Shapefiles
Federal Reserve District boundaries have been discussed many times since they were first defined and have been set for some time now. However, an easily accessible and accurate delineation of the boundaries does not currently exist in a central location. This may create challenges for Regional Banks of the Federal Reserve System, which attempt to provide an accurate picture of the economy in their region. Many times, state-level data are all that are available; however, when county-level data are available, FRS staff can produce more precise estimates of what is happening in a Federal Reserve ...
Briefing
Creating Data Citation Templates for Economics
Copy and paste citation tools exist for traditional academic publication types from places like Citation Machine or Google Scholar, but similar plugins for datasets are scarce. In response, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City built a data citation template for all acquired proprietary data sources and selected open data sources to allow economists to copy and paste data citations into their preferred word processing program.
Briefing
The Road to Cyberinfrastructure at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
As economic models grow in computational complexity and researchers increase their data needs, the staff at the Center for the Advancement of Data and Research in Economics (CADRE) at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City needed to develop an environment that could facilitate better research accommodating these new factors. Staff have worked through multiple technological changes to design and deliver the right infrastructure to meet researchers’ needs, from the development of the first high-performance computing (HPC) environment at the Bank, to the research and coincident development of ...
Briefing
Discussing Data: Evaluating Data Quality
Data-driven organizations are becoming increasingly aware of data quality in order to mature their data activities. Data quality is of particular concern to research functions, but many existing frameworks are not well suited for use by researchers. This paper discusses existing data quality frameworks and focuses on one that meets the needs of research functions. A modified version of that framework is described along with details for use with a wide range of data.
Briefing
A New Approach to Industry and Occupation Recoding in the CPS
This paper presents a new approach to recoding industry and occupation in the Current Population Survey (CPS) from 1976 to 2019. This recode uses the three- and four-digit Census codes present in the CPS to create consistent aggregate categories that closely align with the detailed and major industry and occupation categories used in the 2019 CPS. This approach yields more consistent aggregate categories than previous recoding schemes. This approach can also successfully be applied to recoding industry and occupation in all panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).