Back to TopPurpose. The Survey of State Government Research and Development is the only source for comprehensive uniform statistics regarding the extent of R&D activity performed and funded by departments and agencies in each of the nation's 50 state governments, the government of the District of Columbia, and the government of Puerto Rico.
Data collection authority. The information is solicited under the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended; the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010; and Title 13, United States Code, § 8(b). It is collected under Office of Management and Budget control number 0607-0933, expiration date 31 May 2016.
Survey contractor. U.S. Census Bureau, under National Science Foundation interagency agreement number NCSE-1546582, collected, processed, and tabulated the statistics in this report.
Survey sponsor. The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the National Science Foundation.
Frequency. Biennial.
Initial survey year. 2006.
Reference period. State governments' fiscal years ending in 2014 and 2015.
Response unit. State government departments, agencies, commissions, public authorities, institutions, and other entities that operate separately or somewhat autonomously from the central state government—but where the state government maintains administrative or fiscal control over their activities—with the capacity to perform or fund R&D; units are collectively referred to as agencies.
Sample or census. Census.
Population size. The population comprised 643 agencies from the 50 state governments, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico with the capacity to perform or fund R&D during FY 2014 or FY 2015.
Sample size. Not applicable.
Target population. State government departments, agencies, commissions, public authorities, institutions, and other entities that operate separately or somewhat autonomously from the central state government but where the state government maintains administrative or fiscal control over their activities, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau Government Finance and Employment Classification Manual (see chapter 1), and which funded or performed R&D for state government fiscal years ending in 2014 or 2015. Several industry-specific state commissions, which are generally chartered by state legislatures but are administered independently, are considered state agencies and included in the survey's population. State-run colleges and universities, which are canvassed as part of NCSES's Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey, are excluded from the survey frame. State-run laboratories or experiment stations controlled by state universities are also excluded from the respondent universe, as are any entities determined to be nonprofit or private, as defined by the Census Bureau government classification criteria. However, because agricultural experiment stations in Connecticut are legally organized as a state government–dependent agency and are not affiliated with any university system, they are included in the survey's population.
Sample frame. The total universe includes all state government-dependent units, including those for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, with the capacity to perform and fund R&D, identified with the aid of a state coordinator who is appointed by the governor of each state.
Sample design. The Survey of State Government Research and Development is a census. For the FYs 2014–15 survey, state coordinators were provided with a list of agencies that were previously identified as having the potential to perform or fund R&D from the FYs 2012–13 survey cycle. In addition, these lists included agencies identified from a systematic review of state session laws and additional review of agencies reporting to the Census Bureau's Census of Governments program by Census Bureau and NCSES staffs. Coordinators were asked to review this list and add agencies that they believed were involved with R&D and were not already identified. State coordinators also made adjustments to the agency universe to remove agencies that have never had any qualifying R&D to report to NCSES, to address organizational changes within their respective states since the previous survey, and to provide updated agency contact information.
Data collection. On 7 November 2015, a letter was sent to the office of each state governor, as well as to the governor of Puerto Rico and the mayor of the District of Columbia, asking them to appoint a state coordinator who would provide updates to the universe of state government-dependent agencies that had the capacity to perform or fund R&D during FY 2014 or FY 2015. State coordinators were sent a spreadsheet of agencies and contacts that were surveyed for the FYs 2012–13 Survey of State Government R&D and asked to add state-dependent agencies that might have some R&D, remove any agencies from the survey universe that no longer perform or fund R&D or have been reorganized, and update agency points of contact. Once the state coordinators completed updates to the list of active agencies to be surveyed, they then initiated introductory e-mails to the agency respondents to log in and complete the survey. State government agency respondents would log in to a secure, Web-based survey instrument and complete the questionnaire. Upon completion by all agencies within a state, the state coordinators were provided with a spreadsheet of agency responses to review the survey results before they were provided to NCSES for final analysis and dissemination.
Mode. Self-administered online questionnaire for state agency respondents. State coordinators were provided with a spreadsheet of potential state agencies and contact information to review and revise as necessary to add agencies to be surveyed, remove others from the survey as inactive, or make corrections to agency points of contact.
Response rates. Two response rates were calculated for the FYs 2014–15 Survey of State Government R&D: one for official data verification at the state level, and one for agency-level respondents. Table A-1 presents final agency response rates and also counts of agencies that identified themselves as having qualifying R&D expenditures on the FYs 2012–13 survey.
| SOURCE: National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Survey of State Government Research and Development, FYs 2014 and 2015. | |||||||
| Responses | R&D reported | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agencies selected | Agencies surveyed | Agencies | Rate (%) | Agencies | Responses (%) | ||
| All agencies | 643 | 618 | 96.1 | 375 | 60.7 | ||
| Preselected | 394 | 384 | 97.5 | 277 | 72.1 | ||
| Added | 249 | 234 | 94.0 | 98 | 41.9 | ||
Data editing. Before officially submitting the data for their state, coordinators were asked to perform a final verification of aggregated agency data. All responses, including the initial agency data submissions and final state coordinator verifications, were received via the Web-based survey. Basic logical edit checks, review of respondent comments, and comparisons of data from previous surveys allowed Census Bureau and NCSES staff to detect data errors and work with state respondents to correct them. Census Bureau and NCSES staff also conducted follow-up calls to agencies with data changes of plus or minus 50% and at least $1 million in R&D between FY 2014 and FY 2015 to ensure the accuracy of the survey data.
Imputation. Given the high agency response rate and likely low bias, no statistical methods were used to account for nonresponding agencies. All state and national totals are aggregates of reported agency data. Each state government's organizational structure, laws, and delegation of powers within its purview are unique. Therefore, there are no formal methods of imputation to account for these structural differences, which are consistent with basic statistical methods.
Weighting. Not applicable.
Variance estimation. Not applicable.
Sampling error. Not applicable.
Coverage error. In addition to a Census Bureau review of state session laws to identify agencies with the capacity to fund R&D, NCSES utilizes the expertise of an appointed state coordinator to assist in identifying state government agencies that have the capacity to perform or fund R&D. State coordinators are also offered the opportunity to review survey responses from their respective state agencies before results were finalized for data release. In cases where the state coordinator refused to cooperate, or where some agencies failed to respond to the survey, it is possible there may be an undercount of state government R&D activities, despite efforts by NCSES and Census Bureau staffs to conduct additional queries and outreach with state agencies in lieu of an appointed state coordinator. In other instances, the appointed state coordinator could misinterpret the survey definition and examples of qualifying R&D activities and thus fail to identify all state government-dependent units with the capacity to perform or fund R&D.
Nonresponse error. Of the 643 agencies in the survey universe, 618 (96.1%) responded to the survey. Of the 618 respondents, 375 (60.7%) reported having R&D activities in FY 2014 or FY 2015. No statistical methods were used to account for nonresponding agencies.
Measurement error. The most common form of nonsampling error may be found in the respondents' interpretation of the survey definition of qualifying R&D activities. To mitigate any potential misinterpretations several steps were taken. NCSES provided a series of examples specific to the types of activities performed or funded by state government agencies in the survey questionnaire's definitions and examples. Before officially submitting data, state coordinators performed a final verification of aggregated agency data. All responses, including the initial agency data submissions and final state coordinator verifications, were received via the Web form or e-mail. Census Bureau staff performed basic logical edit checks and reviewed respondent comments, allowing staff to detect errors and work with state respondents to correct them. Despite these efforts, some of the data reported could include expenditures for non-R&D activities, such as commercialization, environmental testing, or routine survey or monitoring work.
State government R&D totals can display considerable volatility between survey cycles. For example, state agency expenditures are influenced by several national and state-specific factors, and large changes (either increases or decreases) are not unusual, especially for discretionary spending items such as R&D. States often will create special funds to support specific research activities for a limited time. These funds may have a one-time appropriation from the legislature and expire within 2–5 fiscal years; state agencies obligate those funds for specific R&D projects, depending on availability and expiration of funding authority as well as other program-specific and administrative considerations. Data reported are agency direct expenditures for R&D in a given fiscal year, not obligations; as such, in the case of multiyear grants to extramural performers, an agency's expenditures for that fiscal year may be greater than its obligations because expenditures may include spending from the previous year's appropriations, depending on the specific budget authority granted by the legislature. Given that state governments have comparatively little experience in tracking and measuring R&D specifically, it is likely that some portion of the reported changes reflects measurement and coverage errors. In the case of R&D funds for extramural performers, some agencies were able to report only obligations made in a given fiscal year and were not able to provide detailed expenditures for each fiscal year.
The survey asked about state agencies' expenditures for R&D as of the end of FY 2014 and of FY 2015. Most states have a fiscal-year period that begins 1 July and ends the following 30 June. For example, FY 2015 is the state fiscal period beginning on 1 July 2014 and ending on 30 June 2015. There are, however, four exceptions to the 30 June fiscal-year end: New York (ends 31 March), Texas (ends 31 August), Alabama (ends 30 September), and Michigan (ends 30 September). Puerto Rico's fiscal year begins 1 July and ends on 30 June, whereas the District of Columbia follows the federal government fiscal year, which ends on 30 September. For comparability, all states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico are surveyed at the same time.
A state's R&D priorities may be shaped by the state's unique legislative and budgeting processes. State budget practices vary considerably due to both political and historical reasons. Nineteen states enact biennial budgets. Of these states, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Texas have both biennial legislative sessions and biennial budgets. The remaining 15 states of Connecticut, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming hold annual legislative sessions but maintain biennial budgeting. Only North Dakota and Wyoming enact consolidated 2-year budgets; other biennial budget states enact two annual budgets at one time. As such, the nature of a state's budget priorities for R&D may be determined on a biennial basis in some states; in others, however, it may be determined on an annual basis. In states with biennial budgets, the legislatures will often make supplemental appropriations to the second-year budget, which may result in further changes to the initial funding priorities.
The data exclude R&D expenditures by state governments that did not flow through state agencies' budgets. The state totals do not include direct appropriations from state legislatures to colleges and universities. For FY 2015, universities and colleges reported expending $3.8 billion on separately budgeted R&D activities that were funded from all sources of state and local government support (see the HERD Survey). For FY 2015, state agencies reported $951 million in expenditures used to support R&D performance by academic institutions. A major factor for the difference between totals reported in NCSES's HERD Survey and the Survey of State Government R&D is direct appropriations or grants to state-run universities that are included in the former but not in the latter. Another likely factor is the exclusion of R&D at agricultural experiment stations from the state survey totals because they are generally associated with land-grant colleges and universities and are canvassed on the HERD Survey.
Direct comparison of state agency expenditures should also be viewed with caution because state governments often reorganize departments and agencies such that some divisions and offices that were part of one agency may be moved to another agency. In other instances, entire departments may be reorganized into newly created departments. Although the FYs 2014–15 Survey of State Government R&D encountered several instances of these organizational changes in several states, the survey itself is not designed to measure specific changes in state government organization. To account for these and other changes in the data, Census Bureau and NCSES staff conducted follow-up calls for agencies with data changes of plus or minus 50% and at least $1 million between FY 2014 and FY 2015 to ensure the accuracy of the survey data.
Data specific to state government agencies were first released with the FY 2009 survey results and are also included in the FYs 2014–15 detailed statistical tables (DSTs). Since the FYs 2014–15 Survey of State Government R&D collected two fiscal years of data at once, some agencies only had qualifying R&D activities in one of those two years. In these cases, the agency is presented only in the DSTs where the agency had R&D for that specific fiscal year. Specific agency-level data for FY 2006 and FY 2007 are not available.
The current Survey of State Government R&D has been conducted for FY 2006, FY 2007, FY 2009, FYs 2010–11, FYs 2012–13, and FYs 2014–15. (No survey was conducted for state governments' FY 2008.) Data presented in trend tables in this report are from the most recently completed survey cycle, which canvassed two fiscal years (FYs 2014–15) as part of the same survey cycle. References to prior-year data should be restricted to those published in this report for two reasons: (1) when completing the current year's survey, survey respondents may revise their prior year's data; and (2) NCSES reviews data for prior years for consistency with current-year responses and, if necessary, may revise these data in consultation with respondents.
For FY 1995, FY 1988, and FY 1987, data collections of state government R&D were conducted by nonfederal organizations that were supported by NSF grants. Prior to those efforts, NSF collected state government R&D data for FY 1977, FY 1973, FY 1972, FY 1967, FY 1968, FY 1965, and FY 1964 in collaboration with the U.S. Census Bureau's Census of Governments and related programs. As a result of differences in the survey populations, in definitions of covered R&D activities, and in collection methods over time, the results of these historical surveys are not comparable with the statistics collected for the FY 2006 and subsequent Surveys of State Government R&D.
Changes in survey coverage and/or population. Each year, state coordinators update the universe of agencies most likely to have funded or performed R&D based on changes in funding authority, organization changes within the government, or other initiatives by the legislature. No survey was conducted for state governments' FY 2008. Beginning with the FY 2009 survey cycle, state coordinators were no longer able to overwrite the aggregate R&D data reported by state agencies to correct or modify the state total. Any changes or revisions were now required to be made at the state government agency level.
Changes in questionnaire.
Changes in reporting procedures or classification. None.
Applied research. Research conducted to gain the knowledge or understanding to meet a specific, recognized need.
Basic research. Research undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge without any particular application or use in mind.
Construction and acquisition of facilities used primarily for R&D . Includes major costs for construction and purchase of buildings to be used primarily as R&D facilities; also includes new construction, major renovations, and purchase of land or buildings.
Experimental development. The systematic use of knowledge or understanding gained from research directed toward the production of useful materials, devices, systems, or methods, including the design and development or prototypes and processes.
Performers, extramural. Those outside the department or agency who perform R&D under the administrative oversight or control of that department or agency. This may include projects for the department or agency as well as the department's or agency's extramural research programs. Extramural performers include the following:
Performers, intramural. Department's or agency's own employees who perform R&D, which includes R&D performed by those employees and services performed by others in support of an internal R&D project (e.g., laboratory testing).
Research and development. Creative work conducted systematically to (1) extend scientific knowledge, or (2) devise new or improved applications, including materials, products, devices, processes, systems, or services. Sources and examples of R&D funding include the following: