The purpose of this paper is to review recent practices by members of the Trump administration that may impact the ability of diversity researchers to have access to data in the coming years.
This is a viewpoint essay based largely on current news reports and does not rely on original research.
While there are strong reasons for concern that the collection, dissemination, and analysis of government data may negatively affect the ability to conduct research, the findings are still primarily speculative and not conclusive.
To the extent that researcher rely on the creation of and access to data generated by federal government agencies, there could be challenges to answering new research questions and/or doing research that compares the present to the past.
Researchers may want to take steps to protect their access to government data by downloading those databases that are most crucial for their work.
This viewpoint article represents only the author’s reflection on what might happen in the future based on what has happened so far.
