PWS - Task Order 35.pdf

Task Order Title: School Climate Support Task Order Type: Firm Fixed Price Continued Support of the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS):2022 From Data Collection Through Datafile Release

Performance Work Statement for Follow-on Continued Support of the SSOCS:2022 From

Data Collection Through Datafile Release

I. Background & Purpose

This project addresses the need to understand the condition of education in the United States.

This project supports the collection of descriptive data on the context of elementary and secondary education in the United States via nationally representative survey of schools, teachers and principals through the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS). The SSOCS is the primary source of school-level data on crime and safety for the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

The procurement supports the SSOCS program conducted by the Cross-sectional Surveys Branch (CSB) within the Sample Surveys Division of NCES.

A significant amount of work in this procurement involves assisting NCES with review of materials produced by the third-party contractors who conduct the study’s data collection. This review is critical to the production of high-quality materials that adhere to standards and best practices for survey research, data dissemination and reporting. Assistance with review is needed to provide technical expertise and support involved in major data collections. Reviews shall be submitted to NCES staff, not the third-party contractors. Contractor staff shall not direct the third-party contractors. The contractor shall also support coordination between the CSB studies as well as with other NCES studies. Examples of this coordination include proposing research or sharing findings that would benefit response rates on multiple studies or alerting a Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) when wording on an item that is shared between studies might be changed on one of those studies.

II. Legislative Authority

The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA – 20 U.S. Code § 9543), and the yearly appropriations Congress makes supporting ESRA provides funding to NCES within the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) to collect, report, analyze, and disseminate statistical data related to education in the United States, including data on the condition and progress of education, at the preschool, elementary, secondary, postsecondary, and adult levels throughout the country.

III. Period of Performance The period of performance for this task order is one base period from June 1, 2022 through December, 1 2023.

IV. Scope of Work The Government requires the contractor to review specifications, plans and documentation which are developed by the data collector (the U.S. Census Bureau), and which are necessary for collecting and releasing data from the SSOCS 2022 collection. The government also requires the contractor to provide support for the publication of documentation materials and reports using the data from the SSOCS collection. Tasks may include:

• Quality assurance

• Preparing documentation

• Drafting, reviewing, and revising publications

Tasks are organized in the order in which they are likely to occur during the period of performance.

Task 1– Monthly Meetings The contractor shall meet in person with the NCES Task Leader once a month to discuss current work and any issues foreseen for upcoming work. The meetings shall be used to maintain open communications between the contractor and NCES. The contractor shall prepare the agenda and take notes that are circulated back to NCES.

Meetings shall be held every month unless the NCES Task Leader indicates a meeting shall not occur. An agenda for the meeting shall be delivered to the NCES Task Leader no later than two business days before the meeting in order to permit NCES revisions and additions. Meeting minutes outlining the content of the meeting shall be submitted to the NCES Task Leader five business days after the meeting for approval and/or revisions.

Task 2 – QA and Compliance Reviews for SSOCS:2022 Data Collection The Census Bureau is responsible for developing plans and specifications for the tasks indicated here with the contractor conducting quality assurance checks and compliance reviews on these deliverables. These Census deliverables include, but are not limited to: unit and item response rate plans and programs; weighting plans and specifications; unit and item nonresponse bias analysis; experiments analyses; and the restricted-use data file, codebook, and access database;

and chapters for the User’s Manual.

Task 3– Analysis and Technical Assistance Requests Apart from analyses for reports, the contractor shall provide analyses as needed to help address requests for estimates and technical assistance using school crime data. The contractor should anticipate conducting 1-2 analyses per month for each month of the period of performance and preparing responses to 1-2 requests for technical assistance per month.

The contractor shall develop tables and figures associated with the analyses per NCES statistical standards. New analyses shall be drafted, on average, within 4 days of the request. Responses to technical questions shall be delivered to NCES, on average, within 24 hours.

Task 4 – SSOCS:2022 First Look Report and User’s Manual NCES standards and Department performance metrics require the First Look (FL) Report to be disseminated to the public within one year of the last date of data collection (estimated to end June 2022), with the restricted-use data file and documentation released at the same time or shortly afterwards. Although Census is responsible for the creation of the restricted-use data file, the contractor shall develop the User’s Manual that shall accompany the data file to inform data users of the contents of the file. Further, the contractor shall complete the FL Report containing bulleted findings, tables of estimates, and technical notes. The contractor shall be responsible for reviewing and incorporating into the FL report and User’s Manual sections drafted by Census.

The contractor was previously tasked with preparation activities for the SSOCS:2022 First Look

Report and Restricted-Use User’s Manual, and this task is to finalize both of these products. The contractor shall submit a draft of these products and plan for additional changes to these documents as they move through NCES and IES review. The contractor should anticipate up to 5 rounds of review for the First Look Report and up to 3 levels of review for the User’s Manual.

Additionally, the contractor shall produce a set of Benchmark tables on the 2022 SSOCS data in which SSOCS:2020 and SSOCS:2022 data shall be compared and to other related data files, such as the Common Core of Data. The contractor shall review these comparisons for large differences and, if necessary, research outside data sources for additional comparison. The contractor shall produce a memo detailing these large differences, findings from their research, and proposal of next steps. The Benchmark tables and memo detailing these large differences are due within six (6) weeks of receipt of the Restricted-Use file. The memo should detail all differences large enough for examination and any concerns.

Task 5 - SSOCS:2022 Restricted-Use Disclosure Avoidance Plan and Analysis NCES minimizes the possibility of a user matching outliers or unique cases on the file with external (or auxiliary) data sources. Because the SSOCS restricted-use files allow direct access to individual records, disclosure avoidance techniques may be required. The disclosure avoidance techniques, by definition, include the techniques applied in a confidentiality edit (if one is performed) and may include additional disclosure avoidance techniques as well (see NCES Statistical Standards 4-2-6 and 4-2-8). The contractor shall develop a plan to ensure that the SSOCS:2022 data file shall meet the disclosure avoidance requirements set forth by NCES and the approval of the NCES Disclosure Review Board (DRB).

Under this task, following the delivery of a final, clean unperturbed DOC restricted-use file from Census, the contractor shall implement the data confidentiality techniques to develop the perturbed restricted-use SSOCS:2022 data file. The contractor shall use a perturbation program to perform the data swapping for the final file preparation. The contractor shall review the output and report requested results to the DRB to assure compliance with all DRB requirements. The contractor shall draft a memo outlining the procedures followed for disclosure avoidance. This memo and analysis shall be submitted to the DRB. Following DRB approval of the disclosure risk analysis results, the contractor shall provide a final perturbed restricted-use data file containing the implementation of the approved disclosure avoidance plan to NCES.

The contractor shall take all inputs for the SSOCS restricted-use data products and prepare the release DVD Master Copy for distribution to restricted-use licensees. The release DVD shall have the following materials: restricted-use data files in ASCII and SAS formats; syntax files for SPSS and Stata for the restricted-use data files; data dictionaries for Stata users; the User’s Manual; Access databases; Excel versions of crosswalks and codebooks, and readme text file.

Task 6 - SSOCS:2022 Public-Use User’s Manual As with previous SSOCS collections, a SSOCS:2022 public-use data file and user’s manual shall be disseminated to the public, in addition to the restricted-use data file and user’s manual. The contractor and Census shall share responsibility for preparing this user’s manual, with some chapters to be authored primarily by the contractor and some chapters to be authored primarily by Census and reviewed by the contractor. This user’s manual can be adapted from the restricted-use manual as well as prior year’s user’s manuals. The contractor shall assume 3 rounds of review for the User’s Manual.

Task 7 – SSOCS:2022 - Disclosure Avoidance Plan and Public-Use File NCES minimizes the possibility of a user matching outliers or unique cases on the file with external (or auxiliary) data sources. Because these files allow direct access to individual records, disclosure avoidance techniques may be required. The disclosure avoidance techniques, by definition, include the techniques applied in a confidentiality edit (if one is performed) and may include additional disclosure avoidance techniques as well (see NCES Statistical Standards 4-2-6 and 4-2-8). The contractor shall review the process used to develop the disclosure avoidance analysis plan for the previous collection’s public-use data file, make recommendations for updates and improvements and create a memo that shall be clear and concise with enough detail to effectively communicate the disclosure analysis plan. This memo shall outline the contactor’s plan and details of the proposed disclosure avoidance techniques, including proposed removals and collapsing of variables and other methods The plan shall be submitted by the NCES Task Leader to the NCES Disclosure Review Board (DRB) and the contractor shall respond to any questions the DRB may have upon reviewing the plan. The contractor should assume multiple rounds of review of the plan.

Upon approval from the NCES DRB, the contractor shall implement the approved data confidentiality techniques to develop the public-use data file. The contractor shall review the output and report requested results to the DRB to assure compliance with all DRB requirements.

The contractor shall draft a memo outlining the procedures followed for disclosure avoidance.

This memo and analysis shall be submitted to the DRB. Following DRB approval of the disclosure risk analysis results, the contractor shall provide a final weighted perturbed public-use data file containing the implementation of the approved disclosure avoidance plan to NCES.

Task 8 – Support for Uploading SSOCS data into DataLab Following the finalization of the SSOCS dataset, it will be uploaded into DataLab. The contractor shall review the DataLab Data Dissemination Plan, which involves topics such as:

metadata development, proposed variables to include in PowerStats and the related simpler QuickStats, baseline tables to use for comparison, as well as any changes to the DataLab application and landing page. Further, the contractor shall review the SSOCS codebook created for DataLab as well as the variable documentation. These files contain information about the SSOCS dataset, such as variable names, variable labels, text descriptions of the source of the variables, value labels, and an indication of the population to which the variable applies. The initial reviews of these files will be extensive. Others will be “compliance reviews”—or reviews done to ensure that errors found in earlier reviews have been corrected and/or that questions have been answered. All reviews of the files shall be done in track changes format on the delivered files.

Once the initial files are cleared and in DataLab on the developmental server, the contractor shall review the information as it appears in DataLab to ensure the data have been populated correctly.

Further, a final form of technical review shall involve production of tables using DataLab and comparison of those tables with extant tables or tables produced using the public-use data file.

The contractor shall produce and review 5 tables using DataLab and the public-use file. Any discrepancies in estimates or standard errors shall be described in writing. For each set of estimates and standard errors compared, the contractor shall provide the code used to produce the estimates and a copy of the output compared.

OPTIONAL Task 9 – Transitioning the SSOCS Into the NTPS The 2022 collection is the final independent collection of the SSOCS. This optional task may be exercised should support be necessary to continue the work of transitioning content and content knowledge from the SSOCS project team to the NTPS. This work may require any of the following tasks, depending on the needs of the transition:

• Review of the NTPS questionnaire with SSOCS items included;

• Writing content for the NCES blog to explain the transition of the SSOCS content; or

• Writing content for the SSOCS and NTPS website to help data users understand which items can be found in the future collections of the NTPS.

Any deliverable requested would be due within 20 business days of the exercise of this optional task, and the contractor should expect two rounds of review for any deliverable requested by

NCES.

V. SCHEDULE OF DELIVERABLES

This schedule assumes a period of performance of June 1, 2022 – December 1, 2023.

Deliverable number

Activity Deliverable Estimated Due Date and Invoiceable Amount For Deliverables

Task 1 Monthly meeting with

NCES

Staff

1. Agenda

2. Meeting minutes

1. Within two business days prior to each meeting

2. Within five business days after each meeting

Task 2 QA and Compliance Reviews for SSOCS:2022 Data Collection

1. Quality assurance review of deliverable within 10 business days of receipt.

2. Compliance review of deliverable within 10 business days of receipt of updated version.

Within 10 business days of receipt of specification which needs review.

Task 3 As-needed analyses 1. Estimated one or two analyses Tables per month and 1-2 responses per month throughout the period of performance.

New analysis shall be drafted within 4 days of request.

Responses to technical questions shall be delivered to NCES, on average, within 24 hours.

Task 4 SSOCS:2022 First Look Report and User’s

1. Final First Look Report and Restricted-Use

1. First Look Report due

Manual

User’s Manual

2. Memo summarizing findings of benchmark analysis including benchmark tables within 12 months of end of data collection (estimated to be June 2023) (80%)

2. Memo due within 30 business days of receipt of the Restricted-Use data file (20%)

Task 5 SSOCS:2022 Restricted-Use Disclosure Avoidance Plan and Analysis

1. Draft disclosure avoidance plan to NCES Task Leader.

2. Final, approved disclosure avoidance plan.

3. Final perturbed restricted-use data file containing the implementation of the approved disclosure avoidance plan.

4. Data files and codebooks for release to licensees

5. Responses to comments and redelivery of files due within 2 weeks of receipt of comments

1. Draft Disclosure plan due within 20 business days of receiving the draft restricted-use datafile (20%)

2. Any revisions to disclosure plan are due within 10 business days of receipt of the comments from

NCES.

3. Dataset due within 15 business days of receiving the final restricted-used unperturbed dataset (30%)

4. Final datafiles and codebooks for release due within 12 months of the end of data collection (estimated to be July 2023) (50%)

5. Responses to comments and redelivery of files due within 10 business days of receipt of comments

Task 6 SSOCS:2022 Public-Use User’s Manual

1. Draft chapters of the Public-Use User’s Manual.

2. Review of chapters written by the data collector.

3. Final Public-Use User’s manual

1. Initial draft of each contractor-drafted chapter due by June 1, 2023. Responses and revisions to contractor-drafted chapters due with 10 business days of each round of review (30%)

2. Review of data collector-drafted chapters due with 10 business days of each round of review.

(20%)

3. Final Public-Use User’s manual due November 30, 2023. (50%)

Task 7 SSOCS: 2022 Disclosure Avoidance and Public-Use File

1. Disclosure avoidance Plan

2. Final, approved disclosure avoidance plan

3. Final public-use data file containing the implementation of the approved disclosure avoidance plan.

1. Disclosure avoidance plan due within 15 business after draft PUF is available (50%)

2. Responses to comments due within 10 business days of receipt of comments

3. Final public use data-file within 12 months of the end of data collection, and 15 business days of DRB approval (estimated to be June 2023) (50%)

Task 8 Uploading SSOCS Data Into DataLab

1. Documentation plan reviews

2. 2 reviews of web application (initial review to ensure completeness and accuracy, technical review comparing DataLab data to independently

Review comments due within 10 business days of receipt of materials or web application access for review produced tables outside of DataLab, and a final compliance review)

Task 9

OPTIONAL

Transitioning the SSOCS Into the

NTPS

1. Draft of a memo or blog or reviewing questionnaire drafts

2. Responses to comments

3. Final deliverable

1. Initial draft of any deliverable requested would be due within 20 business days of the exercise of this optional task (50%)

2. Responses to comments due within 10 business days

3. Final deliverable (50%)

Deliverable number Activity Deliverable Estimated due date

Security Clearance

Submission of the security clearance application to the

Security Clearance Application

Within 2 business days of contract assignment

Employees who have not successfully completed the submission of their security clearance application within 14 days from the date the employee was assigned to the contract must be removed from the contract.

Submission of clearance application within 14 days from days the employee assigned to the contract

Submission of clearance application within 14 days from days the employee assigned to the contract

In the event that the Security Clearance application is not complete, the contractor shall resubmit the application to the COR within 7 business days of notification of an incomplete application or the employee must be removed from the contract

Resubmission of incomplete Security Clearance Application

With 7 business day of notification

VI. Definitions and Clarifications

(1) Although the term “draft” is used frequently in this performance work statement, it is important that the contractor understand what NCES means and does not mean by “draft.” A draft is a complete product of high quality that the contractor (and the Government) can publish with confidence as to its accuracy and usefulness. A draft is not simply what is available on the due date—regardless of completeness or quality. A draft should be free from factual errors and typographic ones and conform to NCES statistical standards. NCES anticipates that only minor changes to drafts will be needed for them to become final deliverables.

(2) Ownership of files and products - NCES owns the files and programs to create deliverables including data files, reports, analysis tables, etc. Files need to be in a format and system that NCES has access to and approves.

(3) References to days in the discussion of deliverables shall be read as business days.

(4) Media clearances will be required for reports developed under this task.

(5) The contractor shall be expected to obtain and maintain restricted use licenses for all of the

NCES datasets described in this statement of work, including all restricted-use files for the

SSOCS

(6) As noted throughout the statement of work, many tasks in this contract require supporting NCES in the review and preparation of data files from key studies that will be conducted by other contractors or federal agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau. Due to the nature of large-scale data collections and IES review requirements, schedules sometimes change due to circumstances beyond the control of the NCES project team. Regular meetings with the COR and data collection team are part of this statement of work and the contractor should use those meetings to stay up to date on potential schedule changes and ensure that they are prepared to adjust to changing schedules while completing their work on time. The Government expects the contractor to take responsibility for the timely completion of all work in the contract.

VII. Other Requirements

Role of Contractor:

Contractor staff assigned to or working on this task shall not release analyses from data provided by NCES without express written consent of NCES. All materials produced by the contractor under this task shall become the property of NCES unless an express written waiver is provided by NCES to the contrary.

Publications using unreleased or prerelease data:

The following guidelines pertain to outside publishing, which is research that is prepared and published and/or presented by authors who have access to NCES data because of work under contract or Inter-Agency Agreement (IAA) with NCES but who are doing work outside of the contract or IAA deliverables. NCES does not pay for outside publishing.

1) Get approval from the survey COR for analysis.

a. This is most often in the form of an abstract of the concept. The abstract must be clear about the research questions that are being answered and the data that are being used.

2) Provide draft of article or presentation file to COR and allow 2 weeks for review before initial submission to journal or other publisher. Allow about one week for review.

a. This can be concurrent with the NCES Data Review Board review, run by Shelley.Burns@ed.gov (See item 3 below.)

b. Components in the draft:

i. As the design and collection of NCES studies on which the research is based are often collaborations between many people, acknowledgement of all contributors is strongly suggested. Additionally, the authors must clear mailto:Shelley.Burns@ed.gov that the publication is not an official NCES release. Below is an example of the type of acknowledgement expected:

“This article is intended to promote ideas. The views expressed are part of ongoing research and do not necessarily reflect the position of the U.S.

Department of Education. The authors would like to thank Project Officer XXX of the National Center for Education Statistics without whose support and insights this research would not have been possible. The authors would like to thank XXXX, XXXX XXX of the Census Bureau for their support in developing and conducting the survey.”

ii. If the data used are not part of a public use or restricted use datafile, a statement about unique access to these data is required. Authors need to be clear about the nature of the access. For example, state in the article that access to these data is solely the result of other work for NCES under contract or IAA and that the data are not available to the public, not even through a restricted-use data license.

3) Paper goes through NCES Disclosure Review Board (DRB) (not contractor’s DRB because it is restricted use and needs to be treated as any other licensee would) – either copy COR on email or send DRB approval to COR. Email Shelley.Burns@ed.gov for her review. Allow about 1-2 weeks for DRB review, which can be concurrent with COR review.

4) Substantive changes as a result of any reviewers’ comments (journal editors, DRB reviewers, peers, copy editors, etc.) that require additional analysis or change to text are provided to COR – Always send to COR during the DRB review at each stage and let COR know of the changes that were made either through a track changes document or bulleted list.

5) Authors must provide COR with a final version before publication. This so the COR has a final record and can be ready for any questions that NCES may field because of the publication.

6) If data that are not part of an NCES datafile are used (e.g., variables not on the restricted use or public use file), the authors must provide archival copy of the dataset used and analysis programs to NCES.

A note about the reviews conducted by the COR when using data other than those available on public use datasets: The COR will review to make sure that NCES, the Department, the survey program, and the specific research that generated the data are all being portrayed in alignment with expectations, that statements about the project are consistent with NCES understanding; and to ensure that the publication accurately reflects the decisions by the agency, and to catch any factual inaccuracies. The COR may have substantive comments for the authors to consider, but these are only suggestions. There should be expectation that the COR is not fully fact checking the publication. The review will not involve a complete edit review and fact checking review.

Publications using NCES data products If the contractor is preparing a report, publication or conference/meeting presentation using mailto:Shelley.Burns@ed.gov publicly available NCES data outside of the contract, they should still provide the COR advance notice of the work and properly acknowledge NCES’ role.