The Guttmacher Institute collects a wide range of critical data on sexual and reproductive health, both in the U.S. and internationally. The purpose of the proposed project is to create new public-use datasets and make them freely available to the wider research community, providing new resources for scholars and students to examine sexual and reproductive health topics not covered by other publicly available data. The datasets are expected to be used in research analyses, dissertations, theses and other academic publications, as well as classroom exercises. Guttmacher will produce a total of 14 public-use datasets using R03 funds. These datasets include a nationally representative survey of U.S. family planning providers, U.S. county-level data on numbers of women in need of services, numbers of clinics and numbers of clients served, and surveys of adolescents and school staff in low- and middle-income countries on the provision of sexuality education and the sexual and reproductive health information and service needs of young people. All datasets will be cleaned, deidentified and thoroughly documented to ensure ease of use. Datasets will be housed at the Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR) archive at the University of Michigan. A parallel index will be maintained on the website of Guttmacher's population center, as well as on Guttmacher's Data Center webpage (accessible from the main website), to facilitate access by different audiences. The availability of these datasets will be publicized broadly at professional meetings, electronically via listserves and social media, and through other channels. The proposed project will enable researchers around the globe, particularly those in low-income countries with more limited research resources, to benefit from access to data not previously available in order to answer questions across the domains of fertility and reproductive health, with the ultimate goal of improving the health of women and men of all ages worldwide.
The Guttmacher Institute collects more data on reproductive health than we can analyze, both from the U.S. and internationally. By creating public-use datasets from these data and making these data freely available to researchers and students, we will enable them to answer questions that will help improve reproductive health worldwide.
