This winter and spring, CSDE piloted a program to address the demand for evidence-based policy-making and program design. Many public-serving organizations recognize the value of research for the success of their programs, but are often constrained by limited budget, time, or staff capacity to design and implement that research. The Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE), with support and inspiration from the Social Science Research Council’s Public Innovations Program (SSRC), led the Accelerate Policy and Research for Greater Impact  initiative. Visit these links to read our final report and view our executive summary.

Through a carefully-designed process, CSDE connected UW researchers to public-serving organizations, helped forge a new path for their research, and advanced the probability of “good fit” matches to potential funders. Project participants included those from public serving organizations, including Sound Transit, Seattle City Light, Walk About Yakima, the Washington Attorney General’s Office, Build 2 Lead, Washington Employment Security Department, and Washington State Court Center for Research. Joining the public serving organizations were UW research collaborators representing scientists from the College of Arts & Sciences, College of Engineering, the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance,  the School of Law, the School of Social Work, the School of Public Health, the School of Medicine, and the Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology.  By the end of the second meeting, every selected organization walked away with the building blocks of a strong research project proposal.

• IPUMS USA
  • New versions of the variables EDUC, HIGRADE, and INCTOT are available for the 1950 full count data. This update is the result of new data capture and represents a significant improvement in the accuracy of these measures. Check out the details on the Full Count Data web page.
•  IPUMS CPS
  • IPUMS CPS has added the May 2026 basic monthly data and updated the COUNTY variable to include additional IPUMS-derived county assignments based on the Census place-to-county population overlap. The new county assignments improve geographic identification of households whose county was not reported in the original CPS; they are a useful tool for geographic classification of these households, but should not be used as complete county identifiers.
•  IPUMS NHGIS
  • NHGIS has released its sixth set of GIS boundary files for 1980 census blocks. This release adds blocks for 52 metro areas including Raleigh-Durham; Knoxville; Albuquerque; Columbia, SC; Colorado Springs; Augusta, GA-SC; Harrisburg; and Chattanooga. In total, NHGIS now provides 1980 block boundaries for 238 metro areas.