2006-05-05: Spring 2006

Minutes for Spring 2006 SSRIC Meeting

Friday, May 05, 2006 at Calif. State University, Northridge

Members present: Greg Bohr (San Luis Obispo), Nan Chico (East Bay), Jae Emenhiser (Humboldt), Carole Kennedy ( San Diego), John Korey (Pomona), Ed Nelson (Fresno), Mike Reibel (Pomona), Steve Stratton (Channel Islands), Rich Taketa (San Jose), Gene Turner (Northridge), Lori Weber (Chico)

Also attending: Andrew Roderick (San Francisco)

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Pending action items:

Ed Nelson and Mike Reibel will set up a meeting with Glenda Morgan and Jerry Handley at the Chancellor’s Office to discuss (lobby for) the budget proposed at the Spring meeting. They will also explore the possibility of a separate budget and accounting system for the SSRIC.

Dues have not been paid for the Long Beach campus. Mike Reibel will contact Jose Moreno at Long Beach.

Select a date and location for the Spring 2007 SSRIC meeting and Student Research Conference (Item #4).

The TRD committee will select a sub-committee to recruit and select outside members for the TRD/SDA proposal review committee (Item #6).

Mike will contact Steve Stambough to confirm current/future committee membership. Mike will also contact Randy Macintosh to confirm continued ICPSR committee membership (Item #7).

Andrew asks SSRIC members to review the website and provide comments, suggestions, and/or requests for further developments. Additionally, members should provide feedback on DIVA (Item #8).

Ed will confirm that the SPSS files from SSDBA are in place at Berkeley, and Andrew will investigate the difficulty of extracting the corresponding codebooks from the SSDBA site (Item #8).

Add section for “Other Data Sources” on TRD (Item #11).

Ed, Lori, and John will explore the possibility of creating a workshop on SDA, pending license approval (Item #12)

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1. Minutes

The minutes of the Winter 2006 meeting were approved.

2. Review of some action items from Winter 2006 minutes:

Article submitted to CSU Leader:

Lori Weber, Gene Turner, John Korey, and Ed Nelson have submitted the article to the CSU Leader newsletter. No feedback has been received as yet; John Korey will follow up and report back.

TRD Module templates:

Andrew Roderick reports that the TRD Module templates are still in progress, and further developments will be reported at a future meeting.

SPSS license agreement:

Mike Reibel contacted Keith Wandrey at the Chancellor’s Office regarding renewal of the CSU SPSS license. The CO is interested in obtaining an off-campus license for students, but no resolution has been reached.

3. Executive Committee:

John Korey, Mike Reibel, and Lori Weber were approved for AY 2006-2007 Executive Committee. These nominations were made by Ed Nelson. The Executive Committee will serve as the mechanism for handling SSRIC business between meetings.

4. AY 2006-2007 meeting locations:

Jae Emenhiser volunteered to host the Fall 2006 meeting, which will be held at Humboldt, October 06-07.

Tentative Fall meeting schedule:

Thursday (10/05): Database Training Workshop (Jae, Lori, and a TBD 3rd person)

Friday (10/06): Business meeting beginning in morning

Saturday (10/07): Workshop on DIVA (Data and Instruction Virtual Archive) presented by Andrew Roderick in morning

Carole Kennedy volunteered to host the Winter 2007 meeting, which will be held at SDSU, February 09-10. The business meeting will be on Friday, with a TBD internal workshop scheduled on Saturday.

The date and location for the Spring 2006 meeting, and the SSRIC Student Research Conference will be decided at the Fall meeting. The CSU Student Research Competition has not yet been scheduled, and the Council decided to wait to schedule our meeting to avoid time conflicts (wish to give students the opportunity to attend both conferences).

The Council also discussed the timing of workshops as they relate to meetings, and whether internal vs. outreach workshops should be scheduled differently. Questions were raised as to whether attendance for outreach workshops would be better on a weekday or a weekend, and whether internal workshops could be on the same day as the business meeting to reduce travel (this was generally agreed to be an unpopular idea). It was agreed for AY 2006-2007 to continue with past practice (i.e. outreach on Thursday, business on Friday, internal on Saturday).

5. Budget:

A draft SSRIC budget for 2006-2007 was presented.

Ed Nelson reported that there will be an overall increase of 10.9% (to $178,957) in data subscription dues in AY 2006-2007. ICPSR has implemented a new fee structure; there will not be a 3.5% annual increase, however there is a large increase (15.7%) this year to be followed by much lower increases in future years. Field dues will increase 3.5% next year, although they are asking for a much larger increase in CSU fees. Roper will go up 8.2%.

If the proposed program initiative is approved, SDA will cost $6000 per year in the future (with an additional $350 setup fee this year). Some of this could be reduced if campuses wish to take on the work of preparing SDA datasets in-house, rather than having it done by SFSU. John Korey described examples of SDA data and applications. It was suggested that SDA could become a source of income for the SSRIC, as new datasets are developed, and may also be a good platform for outreach to community colleges. Additionally, the TRD Committee may wish to solicit proposals for SDA datasets linked to TRD modules.

The proposed budget was unanimously approved.

6. TRD proposals and stipends (and SDA proposals):

The Council voted to reappoint the current TRD committee (Korey, Stambough, Turner, Weber) for next year. The TRD committee will also take on responsibility for SDA-related activities, including promotion and the issuing of RFPs for SDA datasets. The TRD committee will be reappointed each year.

It was proposed that a 3 person committee, with the chair from the SSRIC, be appointed to review and approve TRD proposals and award stipends. Members of this committee are not required to be SSRIC members. This same process and committee (separate but concurrent review) will be used to review and approve SDA proposals. Stand-alone SDA proposals will not be eligible for a stipend.

The current TRD committee is charged to select a sub-committee (and chair) to recruit members for this new TRD/SDA review committee.

These proposals were unanimously approved.

7. SSRIC committee structure:

The council reviewed the current committee structure of the SSRIC. As it stands now, there are the following committees:

TRD: John Korey, Steve Stambough, Gene Turner, Lori Weber

TRD/SDA review committee: (To be constituted, see item #6)

Field: Ed Nelson, Dick Shaffer, Steve Stambough

ICPSR: Randy Macintosh (reappointed in absentia)

Executive Committee: John Korey, Mike Reibel, Lori Weber

Workshop Committee: John Korey, Ed Nelson, Mike Reibel, Rich Taketa (see item #12)

As Steve and Randy were not present, Mike will contact them both to confirm that they wish to continue these memberships.

Lori volunteered to join the Field committee as an alternate.

Carole volunteered to join the ICPSR committee as an alternate (will take over if Randy steps aside).

8. SSRIC Web site, e-mail, and datafiles:

Andrew distributed log-in information and demonstrated new e-mail tools for SSRIC representatives, including expanded ability to manage campus e-mail lists and make campus-wide announcements. Two changes were requested: a ‘Friends of SSRIC’ e-mail category (Korey), and a ‘Select All’ option on the e-mail page (Nelson).

The SSRIC site has been up for a year, and is currently tracking visitors (Google Analytics). Andrew asks that SSRIC members review the site as it stands now, and provide any feedback or requests. Some possible new tools could include a threaded discussion forum, and/or a system for managing workshops (announcements, data uploads, podcasts, etc.)

Approximately 200 Field SPSS .por format data files (1950s to 1990s) have been sent to Berkeley from the SSDBA web site for archiving and access. These files should be in place now (Ed will verify). However, they have no codebooks or metadata. Andrew reports that the old SSDBA site is complicated, and it may be labor intensive to sort out and transfer the appropriate codebooks (he will investigate the possibilities). Andrew should be informed if the lack of codebooks and metadata create problems in using these files.

Test accounts for DIVA are now available, although the system is not fully active. Fuller functionality should be in place in June 2006. Andrew would like feedback and suggestions.

9. Travel eligibility bylaws:

The question has been raised whether travel to the SSRIC Student Research Conference or other workshops constitutes attendance at a meeting, as required for eligibility for travel to the ICPSR OR Meeting (See Winter 2006 meeting minutes, Item #10). To avoid ambiguity, it was proposed that Article VII, section 4, of the SSRIC bylaws be amended to read:

“If any campus is not represented at a minimum of one SSRIC business meeting during the academic year prior to the ICPSR meeting, that campus will be moved to the bottom of the rotation list.”

The addition of the word “business” ahead of “meeting” was unanimously approved.

10. Field fees:

Ed reported that Field is having financial difficulties (due to changes in the newspaper business) and would like to make a substantial increase in subscription fees. SSRIC will discuss the possibility of higher fees (and assess the value of Field to the CSU). The topic will be revisited at the Fall 2006 meeting.

11. Other data sources:

Pew and PPIC data are available and underused. Ed suggested that a new section for “Other Data Sources” be added to TRD to allow links to these and other sources.

12. Workshops:

To date, there have been 10 workshops in AY 2005-2006 (8 database and 2 SPSS). There are 6 planned for AY 2006-2007 so far (East Bay, San Diego, Sonoma, Humboldt, SLO, Channel Islands), and more can be made available due to the larger pool of presenters.

Mike suggested the establishment of a Workshop Committee to schedule and staff workshops, publicize workshops to the CSU, and develop materials. John suggested exploring ways of extending training opportunities to graduate students in the CSU, such as podcasting and/or the development of for-credit courses on databases. The Workshop Committee could also explore these questions of multi-media and distance learning techniques.

The Council approved the creation of the new Workshop Committee, as described, with a starting membership of John Korey, Ed Nelson, Mike Reibel, and Rich Taketa.

New workshop topics were discussed, for example: census data, PUMS, and SDA. Ed, Lori, and John will explore the possibility of developing a SDA workshop. Lori raised the idea of developing a workshop specifically to reach out to disciplines not generally represented in the SSRIC.

13. Summer Program:

The Executive Committee approved 2 people for funding to the ICPSR Summer Program, based on Randy’s recommendation. An e-mail previously was circulated to the Council.

14. DIVA alliance letter:

Since the Winter 2006 meeting, the Executive Committee has been discussing the relationship between TRD and DIVA. In general, the Council wishes to maintain the independence (and ‘brand identity’) of TRD, while identifying relationships and interactions that can be of mutual benefit to both programs. One such synergy would be for DIVA to act as a mirror for TRD; allowing DIVA searches to find TRD material, but retaining the TRD template and info in the search output.

The idea was raised that an alliance between SSRIC and DIVA may justify a dedicated staff person at the Chancellor’s Office to handle accounting and business issues, and/or the synergy between SSRIC and DIVA might allow for a shared staff-person at SFSU for bookkeeping and administrative activities.

The Executive Committee presented a draft of a letter to be sent to Andrew Roderick (SFSU) expressing SSRIC’s support for DIVA. After, discussion, it was agreed that the letter should state SSRIC’s support for DIVA, express that we as faculty would use DIVA, and recognize the potential synergy between DIVA and existing repositories (for example, the TRD mirror mentioned above). In addition, the Council expressed support for a refund from the Chancellor’s Office for campuses subscribing to multiple services (e.g. SSRIC and DIVA). However, the Council concluded that the potential for increased efficiency and/or benefit to the SSRIC from staff-sharing was minimal, and this topic was dropped from the letter.

After revision, the letter was approved unanimously.

15. Meeting adjourned.