How to create a project proposal

On this page, you can get help for the creation and completion of a project proposal in Denmark’s Data Portal. Statistics Denmark reviews the individual project proposals and makes an assessment during the process and before the final approval as to whether the project meets the legal requirements. These requirements are about the documentation of data, that the data content is commensurate with the purpose of the project (data minimisation), and that the project is relevant to society (as specified in the General Data Protection Regulation).

How to create and complete a project in Denmark’s Data Portal

See the video guide on how to create a project proposal (in Danish)

On your front page in Denmark’s Data Portal, you click ‘Data orders’ and then ‘Create project proposal’. Here you give the project a title, select the institution under which the project should be created, and indicate whether it belongs under the researcher scheme, project database scheme or authority scheme. 
If you need help, you can contact an administrator in your institution.

Project details

Here you enter the project description and, in doing so, you account for the purpose of the project, subject area of investigation, relevance to society and argue for the use of data. Below you will find hint questions and recommendations for each point as well as relevant appendixes and references.

1. Purpose

Describe the project’s overall purpose:

Hint questions:

• What is the survey about generally?
• What will the survey accomplish?
• How is the purpose delimited?

Recommendations:

• Keep the purpose description short, precise and in non-professional terms.
• Avoid repetition of matters that belong under project description or population.
• Pay attention to the coherence with the rest of the project proposal.

2. Description

Based on the purpose of the project, elaborate the background and conditions of the actual survey.

Hint questions:

• Which subject area of investigation is the project about?
• Which hypothesis or which research questions are you examining or attempting to answer?
• Why is the population composed as it is (line of reasoning for composition, size and primary data)?

Especially about the reasoning for use of data in the project description:

• What subjects touch on the project, and how is master data and, if relevant, external data involved in relation to these subjects (read further below about the line of reasoning for use of data)?
• When describing data, overall concepts such as ‘socio-demographic registers’ or ‘health data’ are not adequate. Instead, use delimited concepts, which in these examples could be ’immigration’, ’education’, ’criminal offences’ and ’income’ as well as ’diagnosis information’, ’pharmaceutical product data’ and ’rates’.
• The reasoning for external data should be described in the same way as basic data. This applies for data for analytical purposes as well as for population creation.

Recommendations:

• Note that it is on the data controller’s own responsibility that the approved project proposal reflects, makes a case for and documents all data that is associated with the project.
• Remember to select basic data under data content and describe external data under “Additional data”. Changes after approval of the project will require a re-proposal.
• Pay attention to the coherence between the description and the other parts of the project proposal.

3. Relevance to society

Describe the relevance of the project to society in brief.

Hint questions

• What is the connection between the purpose of the project and its relevance to society?
• How is the project relevant to all of society?
• Publication in itself does not constitute relevance to society.

Recommendations:

• Keep the description short and credible.
• Avoid repetitions from the other texts as well as text that does not concern this specific project.

Examples of fulfilling project proposals (in Danish)

• Eksempel 1 - Guillain-Barré syndrom. Overbliksstudie (pdf)
• Eksempel 2 - Alzheimers og økolog (pdf)
• Eksempel 3 - Evaluering af beskæftigelsesindsatsen 'Start Nu' (pdf)
• Eksempel 4 - Befolkningsundersøgelse: Vælgertillid (pdf)

Project access

Here the administrator or a contact person with powers can add users to the project proposal, so that it is possible for these users to access data. The users must have been created in Denmark’s Data Portal and have an active user agreement with the authorised institution that is the data controller of the project.

Data content

This is where you select registers and variables for the project proposal. This is also where you describe the project population. Read more under Population description

Analysis platforms

If your authorised institution has a hosted server, you can choose to create the project here. Alternatively, you can always create the project on the Researcher server. Read more under Analysis platform

Summary

Here you can see your complete project proposal and check that everything has been entered correctly. If you want to change something, you can go back and correct it before you submit your request. If you are an administrator for the institution under which the project belongs, you can submit the proposal directly to Statistics Denmark by clicking ‘Submit’. If not, you must send the proposal to one of the administrators in your institution by clicking ‘Submit to administrator’.

If you get your project proposal back for revision, it means that the project owner in Research Services has reviewed it and added comments that you must consider. You can re-submit the project proposal after editing.