News

The Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, in collaboration with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan and the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research, invites applications to participate in a four-day workshop September 18-21, 2017, in Washington, DC. The workshop will be the first to introduce participants to the use of microdata from the reengineered 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and provide hands-on applications to prepare them to conduct their own SIPP-based research project.

The application deadline is July 31, 2017.

SIPP experts from the Census Bureau will lead the workshop. The Survey Research Center will pay travel, lodging, and meal costs for a limited number of participants.

Aims for this workshop include the following:

• Familiarize participants with Census Bureau concepts such as earnings, household income, program participation, poverty, race, ethnicity, labor force status, and migration.
• Provide practical tips for handling the SIPP’s complex sample design.
• Provide hands-on demonstrations for accessing SIPP data via the Census Bureau’s FTP site and the NBER SIPP data page. We will also provide workshop attendees with flash drives containing the data files and documentation.
• Provide hands-on demonstrations of analyses of SIPP data related to poverty, employment, and participation in safety net programs.
• Provide participants with an opportunity to conduct analyses for their own research projects and produce preliminary findings along with an appropriate public-use SIPP data set that can be used when the participant returns to her/his home institution.
• Provide opportunities for participants to discuss the current status of key research and policy issues with nationally recognized experts.

Classes will meet for three-hour sessions each morning and afternoon. Participants will extract, work with, and analyze public-use microdata files from Wave 1 of the 2014 SIPP. This workshop will not offer instruction in statistics or formal research methods.

To Apply

Applications will be accepted from faculty; postdoctoral fellows; advanced doctoral students; federal, state, and local-level policy and research analysts; researchers at non-profit organizations; and others who would benefit from this workshop. Preference will be given to applicants who meet at least one of the following criteria:

• Analysts who work for government agencies and nonprofit organizations who do not have access to instruction on using the Survey of Income and Program Participation.
• Emerging scholars (Assistant Professors, Postdoctoral Fellows, and Advanced DoctoralStudents) working at universities and colleges that do not offer instruction in the use of SIPP.
• Members of groups historically under-represented in the social sciences. Faculty members from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), Tribal Colleges and Universities(TCU) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) are particularly encouraged to apply.

To apply, visit the ICPSR Summer Program’s Registration page. Applicants should register through the ICPSR Summer Program portal, where they will be able to select the SIPP workshop from the course list and then submit the required application materials. The application should be submitted as a single PDF file that includes the following elements, in the order listed below:

1. Cover sheet with your name and institutional affiliation with mailing address, email address, and telephone number
2. Curriculum vita or resume
3. Brief summary of your current research or analysis activities (about 2 pages)
4. Description of how analyses of the SIPP Microdata will benefit your research and/ or the analysis needs of your agency or organization (no more than 2 pages)

For questions about applying for the workshop via the ICPSR Summer Program Registration Portal, contact the ICPSR Summer Program at sumprog@icpsr.umich.edu

Direct questions about the content, structure, or objectives of the workshop to: SIPP-Michigan-2017@umich.edu

The deadline for receipt of applications is 5 PM Eastern Time on July 31, 2017. Selected applicants will be notified no later than Monday, August 14, 2017.

This workshop is part of the NSF-Census Research Network project of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. It is funded by National Science Foundation Grant No. SES 1131500.

Survey of Income and Program Participation
The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) is a panel survey that is representative of the civilian non-institutionalized population of the United States. The SIPP contains detailed measures of jobs/time not working, health insurance, disability, child care, wealth and assets, program participation, and a number of other topics. It is a primary source of data on household income, labor force information, program participation, and general demographic characteristics in the United States. It is often used to estimate the effectiveness of existing federal, state, and local programs; to estimate future costs and coverage for government programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps); and to provide improved statistics on the distribution of income and measures of economic well-being in the country.

The survey design is a nearly continuous series of national panels, with sample sizes ranging from approximately 14,000 to 40,000 interviewed households. The SIPP sample is a multistage-stratified sample of the U.S. civilian non-institutionalized population. The duration of each panel ranges from 2 . years to 4 years, with the most recent panel starting in 2014 and continuing through 2017. The 2014 panel marked the debut of a fully-redesigned instrument and data processing system, including the introduction of an Event History Calendar (EHC). The survey uses a 12-month recall period. Interviews are conducted primarily by personal visit with some telephone follow-up.

For more information about the SIPP survey, visit the SIPP website at: http://www.census.gov/sipp

SIPP Workshop