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Federal Highway Administration Research and Technology
Coordinating, Developing, and Delivering Highway Transportation Innovations

Report
This report is an archived publication and may contain dated technical, contact, and link information
Publication Number: FHWA-HRT-08-065
Date: November 2008

Long-Term Pavement Performance Compliance With Department of Transportation Information Dissemination Quality Guidelines

CHAPTER 4. Dissemination of Information

Dissemination of information is one of the stated objectives of the LTPP program. The primary focus of the program is to provide a macro release of raw data for use by scientists, engineers, and researchers for engineering based analysis. While published summaries and microdata releases are not the primary dissemination mechanism, a limited amount of data have been distributed in this fashion. The macrodata release includes documentation of data sources and, where possible, accuracy indicators. In accordance with the IDQG, all disseminated data are required to receive some type of review prior to release.

Publications and Disseminated Summaries of Data

Since a primary objective of the LTPP program is to provide raw data for analysis and interpretation by researchers, dissemination of information in printed publications containing statistical summaries is not the primary dissemination mechanism.

MicroData Releases

Although the primary thrust of the LTPP program are macrodata releases, the following microdata releases are used to encourage participation in the program and serve targeted sectors of the transportation research community:

Source and Accuracy Statements

While LTPP does not have formal publication-named Source and Accuracy Statements (S&As), it has developed a vast array of documents which contain the content covered in this part of the guidelines.

LTPP has collected data that could be used to better evaluate data accuracy. Due to funding constraints, these data and reports have not been distributed on a published basis. Some of the information collected by LTPP that could potentially aid a user in assessing the accuracy of the reported measurements are as follows:

PreDissemination Reviews

All formal data disseminated by the LTPP program undergo some type of review prior to release. The type and extent of the review depends on the subject matter being released. LTPP is developing an information category for dissemination that does not receive a "formal" review prior to dissemination.

The following types of formal predissemination reviews have been conducted by LTPP:

LTPP had developed plans for a system that allows dissemination of raw data that has not undergone a formal predissemination review. While the bulk of these data are contained in the database, the data included in this category are classified as objects in database terminology. Most of these electronic objects consist of electronic picture formats, but, on the advice of the external peer reviewers, many are the unedited electronic files from data collection devices. This allows a data user the opportunity to evaluate LTPP data processing and quality systems. At the heart of the process was the creation of a metadata database. The concept that was previously developed is that the metadata about an object contain adequate information to describe the format, content, quality review level, and nature of the data included in this module. The LTPP metadata database was planned as an electronic library based on the Dublin Core Standard and in concert with electronic library standards currently under development by the U.S. National Archives, Library of Congress, and internal FHWA publications staff. Due to budget cuts, development of the formal metadata database has been curtailed to documents indexed by the FHWA library staff.

 

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