The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Archive (SAMHDA) was instituted by the Office of Applied Studies (OAS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), Institute for Social Research (ISR), University of Michigan in 1995.

SAMHDA promotes access and use of the nation’s preeminent substance abuse and mental health research data by assuring accurate public-use data files and documentation in support of SAMHSA?s overall mission: to build resilience and facilitate recovery for people with or at risk for substance abuse and mental illness. The chief goals of the project are to preserve and distribute the nation?s substance abuse and mental health research data and to make them widely available to a diverse audience. SAMHDA particularly focuses on data that can be generalized. SAMHDA data are used by federal agencies, the general public, researchers, treatment agency administrators, policymakers, instructors, students, and community organizers.

The project currently provides data through three mechanisms: (1) Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA), an online data analysis system; (2) Quick Tables, an easy-to-use method for producing analytic tables using pre-selected high interest variables; and (3) Download in multiple formats such as SAS, SPSS / PASW, and Stata. The proposed project will continue much of the work of the current SAMHDA award, including:

? Use staff expertise and Disclosure Review Board (DRB) to conduct disclosure analyses on confidential data with the goal of creating public-use data files when possible;
? Create and disseminate outreach materials and resources, represent the project at relevant professional conferences, and provide technical assistance to users;
? Maintain the SAMHDA Web site and archive of data, documentation, and online analysis files;

New tasks include examining ways to provide access to restricted-use data: provide OAS an option to make restricted-use data available via:

? An online data analysis system designed to apply file-specific disclosure protection methods on-the-fly (Secure SDA, SSDA); and
? A data portal through which approved researchers can access the data from their off-site locations (Virtual Data Center, VDC).

ICPSR proposes to partner with NORC for the VDC. The proposal is to fund years 15-19 of SAMHDA.