Quadrivium: Reconstructive Harmonization of U.S. Higher-Education Survey Data

An integrated database harmonizing multiple NSF/NCSES higher-education surveys into reproducible analytical panels, using Reconstructive Harmonization: each era is reconstructed on its own terms, methodological discontinuities are decomposed into named, quantified components (real growth, definitional change, population expansion, bounded residual), and both are published with documentation a cold reader can use without misreading the discontinuity. Version 2.0 contains two datasets joined into one integrated object. (a) HERD — NSF Higher Education Research and Development survey data (FY 1972–2024) across the 2010 instrument redesign: a 50-year field-level R&D expenditure panel (FY 1975–2024), a Q15/Q16 research-personnel panel (FY 2022–2024), and a Q4/Q5 attribute sibling; this is the expenditure-OUT face (R&D spent, by institution / field / source class). (b) Federal S&E Support — the FY 2020–FY 2023 federal-obligations parse drawn from the NSF Survey of Federal Funds for R&D; this is the funding-IN face (federal S&E dollars committed to individual higher-education institutions). The value of the database is the integrated whole: HERD and Federal S&E Support are linked on the funding-IN ↔ expenditure-OUT axis via the cross-survey institution-identity spine, so funding committed to an institution can be read against R&D it spent. The funding-IN ↔ expenditure-OUT join carries documented misalignments (federal-obligation fiscal-year basis vs. institution reporting-year basis, and institutional-grain differences); see the methods notes for the decomposition. Each dataset is validated against published NSF/NCSES ground truth.