Overview 
Survey Design
Survey Quality Measures
Trend Data
Availability of Data
1. Overview (FY 2004–06 Survey Cycle) 
a. Purpose
The annual Federal funds survey is the primary source of information about Federal funding for R&D in the United States. It is used by policymakers in the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government in determining policies, laws, and regulations affecting science; it is also used by those who follow science trends in every sector of the economy, including university administrators and professors, economic and political analysts, R&D managers inside and outside the government, the science press, and leading members of the science community in the United States and around the world. The results of the survey are also used for budget purposes for four Federal programs:
the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, Small Business Innovation Research, Small Business Technology Transfer, and Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.
b. Respondents
The survey is completed by the 15 Federal departments and their 70 subagencies and the 15 independent agencies listed below:
- Department of Agriculture
- Agricultural Marketing Service
- Agricultural Research Service
- Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
- Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service
- Economic Research Service
- Foreign Agricultural Service
- Forest Service
- Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration
- National Agricultural Statistics Service
- Rural Business-Cooperative Service
- Department of Commerce
-
Economic Development Administration
- National Institute of Standards and Technology
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
- National Telecommunications and Information Administration
- U.S. Census Bureau
- Department of Defense
- Air Force, Materiel Command
- Air Force, Space Command
- Army
- Chemical/Biological Defense
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Defense Contract Management Agency
- Defense Information Systems Agency
- Defense Logistics Agency (includes the Defense Technical Information Center)
- Defense Threat Reduction Agency
- Joint Staff
- Missile Defense Agency
- Navy
- Operational Test and Evaluation Director
- Special Operations Command Test
- Washington Headquarters Services
Department of Education
Department of Energy
- Department of Health and Human Services
- Administration for Children and Families
- Administration on Aging
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
- Food and Drug Administration
- Health Resources and Services Administration
- National Institutes of Health
- Office of the Assistant Secretary, Planning and Evaluation
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
- Department of Homeland Security
-
Science and Technology Directorate
- Transportation Security Administration
- U.S. Coast Guard
- U.S. Secret Service
Department of Housing and Urban Development
- Department of the Interior
- Bureau of Reclamation
- Geological Survey
- Minerals Management Service
- National Park Service
- Department of Justice
- Bureau of Prisons
- Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Office of Justice Programs
- Department of Labor
-
Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Employee Benefits Security Administration
- Employment and Training Administration
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration
- Office of the Secretary
- Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
Department of State
- Department of Transportation
- Federal Aviation Administration
- Federal Highway Administration
- Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
- Federal Railroad Administration
- Federal Transit Administration
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
- Office of the Secretary
- Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration
- Research and Innovative Technology Administration
- Department of the Treasury
- Bureau of Engraving and Printing
- Internal Revenue Service
- U.S. Mint
Department of Veterans Affairs
- Independent agencies
-
Agency for International Development
- Appalachian Regional Commission
- Broadcasting Board of Governors
- Consumer Product Safety Commission
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Federal Communications Commission
- Federal Trade Commission
- General Services Administration
- Library of Congress
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- National Archives and Records Administration
- National Science Foundation
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission
- Smithsonian Institution
- Social Security Administration
c. Key variables
The survey provides data on Federal obligations by the following key variables:
- Character of work
- Basic research
- Applied research
- Development
- Federal agency
- Federal funds for R&D
- Federal obligations and outlays for R&D
- Federally funded research and development centers
- Field of science and engineering
- Geographic location (within the United States and by region/country)
- Performer (type of organization doing the work)
- R&D plant
Other important variables are available in the full methodology report:
- Costs
- Indirect costs
- Overhead costs
- Personnel costs
- Outyears
Note that variables in this survey use definitions comparable to those used by the Office of Management and Budget and the related NSF Survey of Federal Science and Engineering Support to Universities, Colleges, and Nonprofit Institutions (Federal S&E support survey).
2. Survey Design
a. Target population and sample frame
The population consists of the federal agencies that conduct R&D programs. In the survey cycle for data collection on FY 2004–06, 30 federal agencies (15 federal departments and 15 independent agencies) reported R&D data. Because multiple subdivisions of a federal department were in some cases requested to complete the survey, there were 90 individual respondents (5 Federal departments, 15 independent agencies, and 70 department subdivisions). The sample frame is obtained from information in the president's budget submitted to Congress.
b. Sample design
For the 15 federal departments, 5 of them were surveyed at the department level and 10 of them were surveyed at the subdivision level. Of those 10 Federal departments, 70 subdivisions were surveyed. All 15 independent agencies were surveyed.
c. Data collection techniques
Macro International performed the data collection for FY 2004–06 under contract with NSF's Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS). Agencies were initially contacted by phone to verify the name, email address, and phone number of each survey respondent. A web-based data collection system (FEDWeb) was used to collect the federal funds survey data.
Federal Funds data, as collected, span 3 government fiscal years: the fiscal year just completed, the current fiscal year, and the president's budget year. Actual data are collected for the year just completed; estimates are obtained for the current fiscal year and the budget year.
For Volume 54, actual data were collected for 2004; the data represent completed transactions. For this volume, estimated data were collected for FY 2005 and 2006; these data do not represent final actions. The Federal Funds Survey was conducted during the third quarter of FY 2005. The amounts reported for FY 2005 reflect congressional appropriation actions as of that period, as well as apportionment and reprogramming decisions as of that time. Data for FY 2006 represent as-yet unimplemented administration budget proposals. Authorization, appropriation, deferral, and apportionment actions completed after these data were collected will be reflected in later surveys in this series.
FEDWeb is used to collect and manage data for the Federal Funds Survey. This web-based system was designed to help improve survey reporting and reduce data collection and processing costs by offering respondents direct online reporting and editing. The goal is to provide an easier, more cost-effective way both for respondents to complete the survey each year and for the contractor to collect and process the data.
All data collection efforts, data imports, data editing, and trend checking are accomplished using FEDWeb. The FEDWeb system has a data collection component that allows survey respondents to enter their data online; it also has a monitoring component that allows the contractor to monitor support requests, data entry, and data issues. Both components are password-protected, allowing only authorized users to access them.
d. Estimation techniques
Because this survey is a census of all 30 Federal R&D-sponsoring agencies listed in the "Respondents" section, and because the survey has a response rate of 100 percent with no known item nonresponse, responses are neither weighted nor imputed.
3. Survey Quality Measures
a. Sampling variability
Because all eligible agencies are included, there is no sampling error.
b. Coverage
Because identifying relevant federal agencies is a straightforward task, coverage is assumed to be complete except for activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other clandestine R&D activities as defined by the president's budget. Agencies are identified through such sources as the president's annual report, Budget of the United States Government; the Federal Yellow Book; the U.S. Government Manual; and the respondent agencies themselves.
c. Nonresponse
(1) Unit nonresponse—The response rate for this survey is 100 percent; thus, there is no nonresponse bias in this survey.
(2) Item nonresponse—Because agencies are encouraged to estimate information when actual data are unavailable, there is no known item nonresponse.
d. Measurement
Some measurement problems are known to exist in the data. More specifically, some agencies are not able to report the full costs of R&D. For example, the Department of Defense (DOD) does not include headquarters costs of planning and administering R&D programs, which are estimated at a fraction of 1 percent of its total cost; DOD has stated that identification of amounts at this level is impracticable.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the Department of Health and Human Services currently has many of its awards in its financial system without any field of science code. NIH therefore uses an alternate source to estimate its research dollars by field of science. NIH uses the name of the academic department (department code) receiving a grant as an approximation for field of science codes. NIH is currently looking at options to improving its reporting by field of science.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does not include any field of science codes in its financial database, and consequently must estimate what percentage of the agency's research dollars are allocated into the fields of science.
Also, agencies are required to report the ultimate performer of R&D. However, through past workshops, NSF has learned that some agencies do not always track their R&D dollars to the ultimate performer of R&D. This would lead to some degree of misclassification of performers of R&D, but NSF has not determined the extent of the errors in performer misclassification by the reporting agencies.
R&D plant data are underreported to some extent because of the difficulty some agencies, particularly DOD and NASA, encounter in identifying and reporting these data. DOD's respondents report obligations for R&D plant funded under the agency's appropriation for construction, but they are able to identify only a small portion of the R&D plant support that is within R&D contracts funded from DOD's appropriation for research, development, testing, and evaluation. Similarly, NASA respondents cannot separately identify the portions of industrial R&D contracts that apply to R&D plant, since these data are subsumed in the R&D data covering industrial performance. NASA R&D plant data for other performing sectors are reported separately.
4. Trend Data
The information included in this survey has been stable since FY 1973, when federal obligations for research to universities and colleges by agency and detailed S&E field were added to the survey. Many of the other variables are available from the early 1950s on. However, analysts studying trends are encouraged to obtain up-to-date data from the SRS website, because agencies reclassify their responses for prior years as additional budget data become available.
5. Availability of Data
a. Publications
The data from this survey are published annually in detailed statistical tables in the series Federal Funds for Research and Development and the Science and Engineering State Profiles series. Historical information is also available from NSF's Integrated Science and Engineering Resource Data System (WebCASPAR) database located at http://webcaspar.nsf.gov/. Through WebCASPAR a user can build various survey data tables including the following:
- Detailed Historical Tables
- Federal Obligations for Research by Agency and Detailed Field of Science and Engineering
- Federal Obligations for Research to Universities and Colleges by Agency and Detailed Field of Science and Engineering
b. Electronic access
Data from this survey are available on the SRS website at www.nsf.gov/statistics/.
c. NSF contact
For additional information about this survey, contact:
John E. Jankowski
Program Director
Research and Development Statistics Program
Division of Science Resources Statistics
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 965
Arlington, VA 22230
Phone: (703) 292-7787
E-mail: jjankows@nsf.gov
