Requesting and Using Fast Track Data

How to Obtain Data

Access to Fast Track Data

The Fast Track Project is committed to a policy of allowing the research community access to data, under conditions that strictly protect the rights and privacy of Fast Track participants. The research design that has guided Fast Track data collection over the entire study period requires a restricted-use mechanism for sharing the data with the research community. As noted, the restricted-use data policy currently applies to data from years 1 through 15 of the study.
The rationale for restrictions on data use is based on the level of sensitivity of the data, where “sensitive data” are defined as any data from a research project that may compromise the anonymity or privacy of respondents. During the course of the study, the project staff has followed strict guidelines to maintain the confidentiality of the data as it is processed, and will take all appropriate steps to remove direct and indirect identifying information from shared data files. However, the sensitive nature of the data requires that we systematically safeguard the privacy and anonymity of respondents by establishing a contractual agreement with investigators and institutions requesting the data. The specific contractual conditions are set forth in the Data Use Agreement for Fast Track Project. Some of these conditions are described briefly in this section.

Eligibility of Investigators and Receiving Institutions

In order to be considered eligible to receive Fast Track data, an investigator must have a Ph.D. or other terminal degree, and hold a faculty appointment or other research position at the receiving institution. Graduate students who wish to use Fast Track data for dissertation research must apply through their faculty advisors.

Eligible receiving institutions include not-for-profit research organizations, government agencies, and institutions of higher education. Receiving institutions must have established protocols for reviewing research using sensitive data, through an Institutional Review Board or equivalent body.

Requirements of Investigators

As part of the application procedure, the investigator must provide the Fast Track Data Center with a written research proposal that describes research questions, methodology, the measures/years/cohorts of data to be used, and publication plans. A Sensitive Data Security Plan also is required, outlining the measures that will be taken to ensure that no unauthorized persons will have access to Fast Track data, and describing the computing environment in which the data will be managed, stored, and analyzed. Prior to release of Fast Track data, both the research proposal and the data security plan must be approved by the Fast Track review committee and by the receiving institution’s Institutional Review Board.

To cover the expenses of processing requests, producing and shipping data files and documentation, and administering data use agreements, the Fast Track Data Center requests payment of a non-refundable fee in the amount of $1,105 per day. Further consultation with Data Center staff is available at this daily rate.

Deductive Disclosure Risk

In order to further safeguard the privacy and anonymity of respondents, all plans for use of Fast Track data must address the risk of deductive disclosure-the discerning of a respondent’s identity through knowledge of a combination of characteristics of that individual. The Data Use Agreement specifies the following precautions that are required of researchers in any release of statistics derived from Fast Track data:

In a table, no single cell may contain all cases in any row or column.
In no case should the total figure for the row or column of a cross-tabulation be fewer than three.
In no case should a quantity figure be based on fewer than three cases.
In no case should a quantity figure be published if one case contributes more that fifty percent of the amount.
Data should never permit disclosure, either through calculation from a combination of tables released, or when used in combination with other known data.

Data requests will be reviewed carefully for potential disclosure issues through indirect identifiers; for some combinations of data, it will be necessary to apply statistical disclosure limitation techniques prior to data release. For example, a cross-tabulation of respondent’s race with study site yields a quantity figure of 2 in one of the cells, with 99 percent of cases in a single cell. Thus, for one of the study sites, individual-level race categories will not be released. Across all study sites, the small numbers of Asian and Native American respondents (three or fewer per cohort) require that we collapse these categories of the race variable. Site-specific cross-tabulations of gender by some disability categories yield cells with 0, 1, or 2 cases; thus, information at this level of detail will not be released. These and other potential disclosure limitations will be discussed with the researcher and incorporated to the research plan.

For further information on requesting Fast Track data, please review the Data Use Agreement for Fast Track Project and contact the Fast Track Data Center: jgodwin@duke.edu.

Data Availability

The Instrument Administration History and Data Instruments sections of this website provide a comprehensive listing of the datasets and documentation that are available from the Fast Track project.

Data collected by the Fast Track project will be released for use by the scientific community, for research purposes only, through the restricted-use mechanism described below. The data are being released gradually, by year of the study. Currently, data for all three respondent cohorts are available for study years 1 through 15 and 19. The Data Collection History section describes each study year including the age of participants, school grade, school calendar year for each cohort, and the approximate data collection period for each cohort.

Funding for the Fast Track Project

The Fast Track Project gratefully acknowledges the financial support that has made this study possible. The Fast Track project has been supported by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Grants R18 MH48043, R18 MH50951, R18 MH50952, R18 MH50953, R01 MH062988, R01 MH117559, K05 MH00797, and K05 MH01027; National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Grants R01 DA016903, R01 DA036523, R01 DA11301, K05 DA15226, RC1 DA028248, and P30 DA023026; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant R01 HD093651; and Department of Education Grant S184U30002. The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention also provided support through a memorandum of agreement with the NIMH. Additional support for this study was provided by a B. C. Children’s Hospital Research Institute Investigator Grant Award and a Canada Foundation for Innovation award (to Robert J. McMahon).

The Fast Track Project was designed by the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, which has grown to include, in alphabetical order, Karen L. Bierman, Pennsylvania State University; John D. Coie, Duke University; Daniel Max Crowley, Pennsylvania State University; Kenneth A. Dodge, Duke University; Mark T. Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University; John E. Lochman, University of Alabama; Robert J. McMahon, Simon Fraser University; and Ellen E. Pinderhughes, Tufts University.

Data Use Agreement for Fast Track Project

I. Requirement of Investigators and Receiving Institutions
Fast Track data are released only for research use. Therefore, investigators must meet the following criteria in order to be considered eligible to receive Fast Track data:

have a PhD or other terminal degree, and
hold a faculty appointment or other research position at the receiving institution.

Receiving institutions must meet the following criteria:

be an institution of higher education, a research organization (non-profit), or a government agency,
have a demonstrated record of using sensitive data according to commonly-accepted standards of research ethics,
and have established protocols for an Institutional Review Board/Human Subjects Review Committee or equivalent body to review research proposals using sensitive data.

II. Research Proposal
Applicants for Fast Track restricted data must provide to the Fast Track Data Center a written description of the research project, including an abstract, research questions, primary methodology, categories of variables to be used, the types of data from other sources that may be merged with this restricted data file, and plans for use of the results of the research, including plans for publication. The research plan should specify the time frame for analysis of the data.

III. Sensitive Data Security Plan
Potential investigators should submit a Sensitive Data Security Plan to the Fast Track Data Center, outlining the measures that will be taken to ensure that no persons, other than those authorized by the signed agreement, can have access to the contents of the Fast Track data sets. This data protection plan applies to the data files supplied by the Fast Track Data Center, as well as any copies made by the research team, and any new data derived from the restricted data. “Derived data” include subsets of cases or variables, as well as numerical or other transformations of variables from the original data. The plan also should include a discussion of the computing environment in which the data will be managed, analyzed, stored, and transmitted among research team members. The investigators must address in detail the security measures that will be implemented for protection of these restricted data. Specific guidelines for preparing the Sensitive Data Security Plan are outlined in Attachment 1.

IV. Review Board Approval
Fast Track requires that the investigator submit a copy of the document, signed by the receiving institution’s Institutional Review Board, approving the research project and acknowledging the risks of deductive disclosure that require special procedures for handling Fast Track data. The IRB also must approve the procedures for the secure use and storage of the data as agreed in the Sensitive Data Security Plan. Human Subjects review for Fast Track data must be in accordance with procedures used for live human subjects; the investigator may not request exemption from review. Fast Track will release data only for projects that have received approval through expedited or full board review of both the research proposal and the Sensitive Data Security Plan.

V. Data Use Agreement

Obligations of the Investigator, Research Staff, and Receiving Institution

The data provided under this agreement shall be held by the investigator, research staff, and receiving institution in strictest confidence and can only be disclosed in compliance with the terms of the signed agreement. For use of data files from the Fast Track Project, the investigator, research staff, and receiving institution agree:

That the data will be used solely for statistical analyses and that no attempt will be made to identify specific individuals, families, households, schools, or institutions, nor will any listing of data at the individual, family, or school level be published or otherwise distributed.
That, if the identity of any person, family, household, school, or institution should be discovered inadvertently, then (1) no use will be made of this information, nor will it be shared with anyone else; (2) one of the Principal Investigators of the Fast Track project will be notified immediately of the incident; (3) the identifying information will be safeguarded or destroyed as requested by the Fast Track project.
To avoid inadvertent disclosure of persons, families, households, or schools by taking the following precautions in the release of statistics derived from the data set:
1. In no table should a single cell contain all cases in any row or column.
2. In no case should the total figure for row or column of a cross-tabulation be fewer than three.
3. In no case should a quantity figure be based upon fewer than three cases.
4. In no case should a quantity figure be published if one case contributes more than fifty percent of the amount.
5. In no case should data on an identifiable case, nor any of the kinds of data listed above, be derivable through calculation from the combination of tables released.
6. Data released should never permit disclosure when used in combination with other known data.
That only the persons identified in the data agreement as investigator or research staff will have access to the contents of the data files, including derived data files.
To comply fully with the approved Sensitive Data Security Plan
To supply Fast Track with Confidentiality Pledges (Attachment 2), with original signatures, for the investigator and all research staff identified in the Supplemental Agreement with Research Staff (Attachment 3).
To respond promptly and in writing to inquiries from the Fast Track Data Center regarding compliance with this agreement or the expected date of completion of the research.
To include in all written reports or other publication, the following statement: This research is based on data from the study entitled [“Fast Track,” or “Multi-Site Prevention of Adolescent Problem Behaviors,” or “Multisite Prevention of Conduct Disorder”], supported by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Grants R18 MH48043, R18 MH50951, R18 MH50952, R18 MH50953, R01 MH062988, R01 MH117559, K05 MH00797, and K05 MH01027; National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Grants R01 DA016903, R01 DA036523, R01 DA11301, K05 DA15226, RC1 DA028248, and P30 DA023026; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant R01 HD093651; and Department of Education Grant S184U30002. The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention also provided support through a memorandum of agreement with the NIMH. Additional support for this study was provided by a B. C. Children’s Hospital Research Institute Investigator Grant Award and a Canada Foundation for Innovation award (to Robert J. McMahon). The study was designed by the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, which has grown to include, in alphabetical order, Karen L. Bierman, Pennsylvania State University; John D. Coie, Duke University; Daniel Max Crowley, Pennsylvania State University; Kenneth A. Dodge, Duke University; Mark T. Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University; John E. Lochman, University of Alabama; Robert J. McMahon, Simon Fraser University; and Ellen E. Pinderhughes, Tufts University.To comply with copyright restrictions in the use of documentation from the Fast Track Data Archive.
This documentation provides the information needed by researchers to understand the purpose of the measure used to create the dataset, the meaning of individual items and derived variables, response codes, and any other basic descriptors. While not a facsimile of the instrument used to collect the data, the documentation provides a considerable amount of information regarding its content. This information must not be reproduced or distributed; it is to be used solely for purposes specifically relevant to the interpretation of Fast Track data requested by the investigator for the approved project.
To destroy all electronic and paper files at a date specified within the data use agreement. This date will likely depend, in part, upon the complexity of the project, the professional societies and journals to whom the data will be reported, and the data retention policy of the institution with which the investigator is associated.
To provide annual reports to the Fast Track Data Center, which include:1. copy of the annual IRB approval for the project 2. a listing of public presentations at professional meetings using results based on the data, 3. copies of papers accepted for publication using these data, with complete citations.
In the event that the investigator changes institutional affiliation during the period covered by this contract, the investigator will take the following actions:1. Inform the Fast Track Data Center prior to relocation 2. Resubmit a data security plan and obtain signed IRB approval from the new institution. 3. Provide assurance that all data files are removed from the original site.
Research subjects who participated in the Fast Track project are protected by a certificate of confidentiality issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in accordance with section 301(d) of the Public Health Service Act 42 U.S.C. 241(d). Under the terms of this agreement, the Confidentiality Certificate applies to the receiving institution, investigator, and research staff as “contractors or cooperating agencies;” as such, they are “authorized to protect the privacy of the individuals who are the subjects of the Fast Track project by withholding their identifying characteristics from all persons nor connected with the conduct of the research.” “Identifying characteristics” are considered to include all those data defined as sensitive under the terms of this agreement.
That the receiving institution will treat allegations, by Fast Track or other parties, of violations of the confidentiality provisions in this agreement as allegations of violations of its policies and procedures on scientific integrity and misconduct. If the allegations are confirmed, the receiving institution will treat the violations as it would violations of the explicit terms of its policies on scientific integrity and misconduct.

Obligations of the Fast Track Project

The Fast Track project will promptly respond to inquiries regarding use of the restricted data, and encourage interested persons to submit a preliminary description of the research plan. Applications for data use, requiring submission of a data use agreement under the provisions outlined above, will be reviewed and processed within a month of receipt of the completed application.
The data files requested by the investigator will be provided within one month of the execution of the data use agreement. The data will be sent on CD ROM by express mail, for a fee to cover these and other administrative costs. Electronic documentation of the content of the data files will be sent within the same period.
As long as the Fast Track project is supported by a federal research grant, the Data Center will provide limited telephone and email consultation to the investigator and/or research staff as to the origins, structure, and general content of the data files sent. Further consultation with Data Center staff as to techniques for data management or analysis will be available for an additional fee.

VI. Incorporation by Reference

The parties agree that the following documents are incorporated into this agreement by reference:

A copy of the IRB approval of the research project, taking into special consideration deductive disclosure risks, at the expedited or full level of review.
The Sensitive Data Security Plan proposed by the investigator and approved by the Fast Track Project staff.