CDER DATA STANDARDS MANUAL

FDA Data Element Number. GEO-00204

CDER Data Element Number. C-GEO-00204

Data Element Name. States and Outlying Areas of the United States.

Description. This standard provides names, abbreviations and codes for representing the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the outlying areas of the United States.

Source. Federal Information Processing Standards Publication (FIPS Pub) 5-1.

Relationship. Counties and County Equivalents (GEO-00201); Named Populated Places, Primary County Divisions, and Other Locational Entities of the United States (GEO-00202); Metropolitan Statistical Area (GEO-00203).

FDA Specifications. United States, the District of Columbia, and the outlying areas of the United States are represented by a two (2) digit number, right justified with leading zero.

CDER Specifications. a) FIPS designates a two-digit numeric code for each state and the District of Columbia, instead of using a U.S. Postal Service two-letter abbreviation. Since CDER uses the data in this field to address correspondence, and since the two-digit numeric code is not recognized by the U.S. Postal Service, it was felt that we needed to deviate from FIPS in this regard, and solely employ the U.S. Postal Service two letter abbreviation.

b) As stated in GEO-00101, FIPS designates a country code for each territory of the United States, which usually has the letter 'Q' as the second character, rather than using the U.S. Postal Service territory codes. Since CDER uses this address data to generate letters, it was felt that CDER needed to deviate from the FIPS data elements in this field when U.S. territories were represented. Thus, we have added the U.S. Postal Service U.S. territory abbreviations to C-GEO-00204, and have deleted the FIPS U.S. territory abbreviations from C-GEO-00101. Further, when a U.S. Postal Service U.S. territory abbreviation is placed in a state field, the country field associated with that record should contain the FIPS abbreviation 'US'. c) When the U.S. territory has no known abbreviation, CDER reserves the abbreviation 'XX' where null fields are not allowed. If there is no known two-letter abbreviation, the U.S. territory should be completely spelled out in the ADDR_FORIEGN field.

It was decided that FIPS codes would be specified in this standard monograph as a cross-reference to enable data conversion from non-CDER components.

FDA Approved Date. July 17, 1986.

CDER Approved Date. November 5, 1991.

FDA Revised Date.

CDER Revised Date. November 14, 1997.

Data Values.

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