ABOUT CNSTAT

The Committee convenes expert panels to conduct studies on the data and methodology needed to improve our understanding of the U.S. population, the economy, the environment, public health, crime, education, immigration, poverty, welfare, terrorism, and other public policy topics.

The Committee draws on its parent institutions within the National Academies—the National Research Council, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine—to engage the nation’s leading experts in its’ studies. Committee members and staff are generally statisticians, economists, and other quantitative social scientists with special interests in applications across many scientific disciplines and issues of public policy. Study panel members typically represent a broad range of scientific disciplines relevant to the topic of study. Committee and panel members volunteer their services in the public interest.

Support for the Committee’s activities, including oversight of its panel studies and the conduct of some special studies, is provided by a consortium of federal agencies including the Department of Defense, Census Bureau, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor, and the National Science Foundation.

The Committee’s reports are highly influential in public policy communities, and in government and academic statistical communities. Among the Committee’s more influential studies are those on poverty measurement, confidentiality, cognitive aspects of survey methodology, cost-of-living indexes, polygraph and lie detection, and the design of the decennial census. Topics of current study include a review of the 2010 census, evaluation of the Children’s Health Insurance Policy allocation formula, child eligibility for school nutrition programs, redesign of surveys for the Energy Information Administration, data use from the American Community Survey, measurement of higher education productivity, and subjective measures of well-being.