Computing & Data Security

PRC Technical Support

Technical support is available during normal business hours:
M-F 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Email: help@prc.utexas.edu

Desktop support services for faculty and research staff include:

• Hardware and software support
• Fleet compliance and system security
• Specialized application support
• Consultation and procurement of computing purchases
• Restricted data workstation configuration and support
• Restricted data remote access project server configuration and support

The Population Research Center offers a Secure Data Enclave for secure storage and analysis of Institute of Education Sciences data.  The secure computing environment is available for authorized PRC faculty and their project staff to use for analyzing these data.  Access to this enclave is strictly monitored by the UTPD and controlled by electronic access control system.

Software Available in the Secure data Enclave:

• Stata MP/14
• Mplus 7
• SAS 9.4
• R and R Studio
• HLM
• MS Office

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PRC File Server and file storage information:

Each PRC user receives 20 GBs of personal storage space. This personal storage space is connected in Windows Explorer as your T: drive. These files can only be accessed by you. Your T: drive is backed up daily and is the best place to store your important files. Please do not store important files on the C: drive of your computer as these files are not backed up. 
Projects are assigned space on the Q drive.  This space is on an as needed basis and is also backed up daily.
Temporary storage is available on the “Scratch” drive. The “Scratch” drive will show up as the X: drive in Windows Explorer. The files on the Windows Scratch drive are never backed up and are deleted at the end of each semester. It is to be used for temporary storage or for sharing non-restricted files with other PRC users. Everyone can access it and it is NOT secure space. Feel free to create your own folders on the “Scratch” drive when needed, but always have a backup copy (if needed) as anyone could delete these files.

UT Box:

Box cloud storage is a campus-wide service that allows faculty, staff, and students at the University of Texas at Austin to use Box for storing and sharing files for business and academic purposes.  UT Box provides unlimited storage for all faculty, staff and students.  For projects, the PRC has an unlimited UT Box allocation. Please request a shared directory by emailing us at help@prc.utexas.edu.

University of Texas at Austin Dataverse

The University of Texas at Austin Dataverse serves as a platform for publishing and archiving the University's research data. It was established to help UT-Austin's research community meet data sharing requirements, to facilitate data citation, and to promote collaboration and reproducibility.

Login to REDCAP

*UPDATE*

The Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarships and Creative Endeavors (OVPR) has agreed to provide REDCap as a common service to PRC researchers beginning on Monday, December 19th, 2022.

To support this transition, on Friday, December 16, 2022, at 5:00 pm, the PRC REDCap service will go offline and be migrated to the OVPR. Data entry or collection will not be available during the transfer period. Once the OVPR REDCap service is up and running, you will receive more information about the transfer.

What does this mean for users?

Going forward, REDCap for PRC users will be supported and maintained by the OVPR. 

There will not be interruptions to current projects and there is no action needed from users. The only items changing will be the home page information and the support link.

There is a new Support Request via ServiceNow for any support needed HERE. This is the primary source of support with the OVPR REDCap going forward. If you have any questions about the transition, please reach out to the OVPR team by submitting an IT Support Request using the contact form.

REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a secure, web-based application designed exclusively to support data capture for research studies.

REDCap provides

• An intuitive interface for data entry with data validation
• Audit trails for tracking data manipulation and export procedures
• Automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to common statistical packages (SPSS, SAS, Stata, R)
• Procedures for importing data from external sources

Advantages of REDCap

• Secure and web-based - Input data from anywhere in the world with secure web authentication and data logging. 
• Data storage and backups -Your data is stored and backed up on PRC servers, which are approved for Category I data.
• Flexible Databases – Can be used for longitudinal studies, scheduling, paper/pencil forms, telephone interviews, and much more.
• Fast and flexible - Conception to production-level database in less than one day.
• Multi-site access - REDCap projects can be used by researchers from multiple sites and institutions.
• Export data to common data analysis packages- Exports raw data and syntax files for SAS, Stata, R, and SPSS for analysis.
• Fully customizable - You are in total control of shaping your database.
• Mid-study modifications - You may modify the database at any time during the course of your study.
• Data import functions - Data may be imported from external data sources to begin a study or to provide mid-study data uploads.
• Data comparison functions - Double data entry / Blinded data entry

How to get started building a REDCap Database

Click here for Video Tutorials.  You do not need to log in to watch the tutorials.

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The Population Research Center offers a Windows remote access server for statistical analysis.  The server is available for PRC affiliates to use on campus and remotely. More inforamtion is found here.

In order to connect to the PRC Stats server, you will need to setup remote access by using these setup instructions

Currently available Software:

• StataMP 15.1
• SAS 9.4
• R 3.5.2
• Rstudio 1.1.463
• mPlus 8.2
• StatTransfer 14.2
• ArcGIS
• Office 2016
• 7-Zip
• Notepad++

Currently available Software on the PRC Stats Server:

• Stata MP 18
• SAS
• R/Rstudio
• mPlus
• StatTransfer
• Office
• 7-Zip
• Notepad++

 

Software available in the PRC Computer Lab:

• Stata MP 18
• Stat/Transfer
• R and R Studio
• MS Office

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The PRC manages servers for funded research projects. Please contact help@prc.utexas.edu during your project development phase to discuss with project staff your computing needs to ensure that you have the computing resources you need for project.

Add Health Server – using restricted Add Health data requires a establishing a contract to use the data. The PRC has a server that provides approved researchers with access to the restricted use data in a computing environment that meets Add Health standards. For information on how to access this resource, please contact help@prc.utexas.edu.

TACC provides high performance computing, visualization, data analysis, storage, software, and cloud, gateways & portal interfaces. Every day, TACC's staff work with hundreds of researchers, enabling them to discover new drugs, develop renewable energy sources, and visualize the explosion of a star, among many other important discoveries. Not just for scientists and engineers, TACC's resources can be used by technologists, industry partners, educators, humanities scholars, and others. More information can be found here.

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