DUALabs (National Data Use and Access Laboratories) was the name of an American company that created and disseminated

microdata Microdata can mean: * Microdata (statistics), a statistical term for individual response data in surveys and censuses * Microdata (HTML), a specification for semantic markup in HTML * Microdata Corporation Microdata Corporation was an American ...

and

aggregate data Aggregate data is high-level data which is acquired by combining individual-level data. For instance, the output of an industry is an aggregate of the firms’ individual outputs within that industry. Aggregate data are applied in statistics, da ...

files for the 1960 and 1970 censuses.

Overview

The DUALabs 1960 census microdata file was noteworthy because it was designed to compatible with data from the 1970 census, allowing easy analysis of economic and demographic change between 1960 and 1970. The compatible DUALabs microdata inspired the

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) is the world's largest individual-level population database. IPUMS consists of microdata samples from United States ''(IPUMS-USA)'' and international ''(IPUMS-International)'' census records, as well ...

which provides compatible census microdata for the period since 1850.Ruggles 2005, p. 1405 DUALabs used a proprietary compression algorithm to compress the 1960 and 1970 census data under

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party *National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political gr ...

grant 7249358 to the

Center for Research Libraries The Center for Research Libraries (also known by its acronym, CRL) is a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries, based on a buy-in concept for membership of the consortia. The consortium acquires an ...

. DUALabs also received funding for the project from the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

and

NICHD The ''Eunice Kennedy Shriver'' National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States Department of Health and Human Services. It supports and conducts research aime ...

(Contract 72-2707). This algorithm made wide dissemination of massive census files feasible for the first time. After DUALabs declared bankruptcy in the early 1980s, however, some data became inaccessible because the decompression software was not generally available to researchers.Dualabs business problems were discussed in Jacobs 1981, p. 25. All DUALabs census data are now recovered, however, and are available through the

National Historical Geographic Information System The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) is a historical GIS project to create and freely disseminate a database incorporating all available aggregate census information for the United States between 1790 and 2010. The proj ...

and the

. The company was headed by former

Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of the ...

employee Jack Beresford (1931–1996), who had worked on the compilation of the 1960 census, and the company headquarters was in

Rosslyn, Virginia Rosslyn ( ) is a heavily urbanized unincorporated area in Northern Virginia located in the northeastern corner of Arlington County, Virginia, north of Arlington National Cemetery and directly across the Potomac River from Georgetown and Foggy Bo ...

. Other persons associated with this project were Gary Hill who was an employee of DUALabs and subsequently an employee of Donnelly Marketing (Stamford, CT) and CACA in Rosslyn, VA. Also, private sector organizations were members of DUALabs and Spindletop Research, Inc., Lexingon, Kentucky was a member. William (Bill) Davenall, retired, Esri of Redlands, California as their Global Manager of Health and Human Services) and was a professional researcher employed at Spindletop Research (a 501(c)3 associated with the University of Kentucky and the Commonwealth of Kentucky at the inception of DualLabs. (4)2012

Footnotes

(4) William F Davenhall, Esri, Redlands, California, 2012

References

Ginda, Thomas. Old Census, New Twist; Four Area Districts, Mar 29, 1970. pg. E1 Jacobs, Sanford. "Data Analyst Sues to Save Program Priced at $8,000, Vs. U.S.'s $110 Tag", Dec 18, 1981. p. 25. Ruggles, Steven
The Minnesota Population Center Data Integration Projects: Challenges of Harmonizing Census Microdata Across Time and Place
2005 Proceedings of the American Statistical Association, Government Statistics Section, Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association, pp. 1405–1415 {{DEFAULTSORT:Dualabs Defunct companies based in Virginia