HOW TO OBTAIN FFS STANDARD NATIONAL FILES

FFS Standard National Files (see Standard National Files) can be obtained for research purposes by submitting a research proposal to the FFS Advisory Group. Since 1999, no more formal deadline is set. Proposals can be submitted at any time. As of January 2001, 85 research projects were approved.

Before submitting a research proposal researchers should consult the list of the titles of the approved research projects that are going on and their outputs, so that overlap can be avoided and/or collaboration can be initiated. The address of the first author of each research project is mentioned in this list. The PAU has been requesting the authors of the approved research proposals to provide information on the progress made with the research project. Under the item ‘Progress Report’ the information on the outputs as it was provided by the authors can be found.

FFS research proposals and their corresponding data requests should be submitted through a special application form. Individuals wishing to submit proposals for cross-country comparative research along with requests for standard national files, are invited to complete this application form and return it to the FFS Project Manager (see Contact us). Only proposals for specific, well-defined comparative research projects with finite time frames will be accepted. Completed applications exceeding 4 pages will not be considered; each accompanying CV shall be at most 1 page long.

Proposals and requests will be reviewed by the FFS Advisory Group (see Support) within one month after submission of the proposal.

After this, successful applicants will be requested to submit signed data confidentiality pledges to the PAU before the requested data can be distributed. Confidentiality pledges are part of the application form. Special permission has to be obtained from the National Statistical Office to work with the Swedish and Swiss data files.

Countries for which SRF data are available for comparative research up to now are:

Austria	Germany	Portugal
Belgium	Hungary	Slovenia
Bulgaria	Italy	Spain
Canada	Latvia	Sweden
Czech Republic	Lithuania	Switzerland
Estonia	New Zealand	United States of America
Finland	Norway
France	Poland

The datafiles for the Netherlands is available in an unstandardised format. However, the file can only be distributed to users once it has been transposed into a standardised format. The data file for Greece will become available in the coming months.

The data files are available in three formats:

• an ASCI file and a related SPSS program to read the ASCI file

• a transposed data file, which can only be read by ISSA

• a compact data archive which can only be read by TDA