U.S. General Accounting Office

Federally Funded Research at Institutions of Higher Education
(GAO-04-223SP)

This document presents the results of GAO's survey of federal higher education grant recipients. To obtain data about the policies of universities and colleges concerning (1) making the results of federally funded research available to the public without delays, and (2) managing financial conflicts of interest, we surveyed these universities and colleges via a web-based survey. In addition, we asked whether access to data from federally funded research has been requested through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The survey covered (1) policies and procedures for ensuring that federally funded research results are made available to the public, (2) views on the advantages and disadvantages of posting final technical reports to an agency's Web site, (3) FOIA requests for research data, (4) conflict of interest and financial disclosure policies, and (5) research funding.

We identified the 200 universities and colleges that received the highest amounts of federal research funding in fiscal year 2000. The survey was activated on January 29, 2003 and was available until May 31, 2003. To ensure security and data integrity, we provided each contact person with a password to access and complete a questionnaire. From the 200 survey participants, we obtained 171 useable responses for an overall response rate of 86 percent. A more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology and a discussion of the survey results are contained in our report entitled "University Research: Federal Agencies Need to Better Protect Against Financial Conflicts of Interest" GAO-04-31. We conducted our survey work from August 2002 through September 2003 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Table of Contents

Instructions for Viewing the Results from this Survey

How to View the Questionnaire

Click on the Table of Contents link located in the lower right of this screen. To read to the bottom of the screen, you may need to use your scroll bar on the right side of this screen.
The first six screens contain introductory material and information for respondents on how to complete the questionnaire. There are no survey results on these screens.

How to View the Responses for Each Question

To view the responses to each question, click on the question number (Links to survey questions will look like this: 1. 2. 3., etc.).
After viewing the responses to each question, click on the "x" in the upper right corner of your screen to close that window and return to the questionnaire.
When a respondent wrote a narrative response to a question, we present the percent of respondents making a comment.

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