Skip to main content



Contribute Data to NDACAN

General Information

The Childrens Bureau and NDACAN share the belief that secondary analysis of archived data is a vital aspect of research. Archiving the data with NDACAN benefits the contributor by preserving the original data and increasing the potential number of author citations. Your contribution also benefits the scientific community as a whole, bringing greater understanding to the study of child well-being through replication and extension of your previous research. NDACAN also serves recipients of Childrens Bureau grants who are required to archive their data.

NDACAN evaluates the archiving suitability and feasibility of submissions on a case-by-case basis. In order to be considered for archiving, the dataset must have adequate documentation. Please note that we are not able to archive data from a secondary data analysis project and at this time, and we are not able to archive qualitative data unless it has been summarized into quantifiable form.

Contributor's Guide

The National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect has released a new document entitled Contributor's Guide to Preparing and Archiving Quantitative Data (PDF), to assist prospective data contributors with the archiving process.

The Guide covers the issues, time frame, and strategies to archiving data in a manner suitable for secondary analysis. Many of these guidelines describe proper data management that will prove useful to a project throughout its duration. We invite you to download the free Guide for your work, or to forward a link to this page as appropriate.

If you are in the stage of writing a research grant proposal, NDACAN recommends incorporating a Contributor Data Management Plan. NDACAN has published its own Contributor Data Management Plan Guidelines.

The Children's Bureau has created a Data Sharing Resources (PDF) with information about successful data sharing efforts and techniques.

Video: Archiving Quantitative Child Maltreatment Data

NDACAN has produced a video for potential data contributors to understand the rationale and the steps for archiving data.