DMPs are not evaluation plans, but they should address how evaluation data will be handled and possibly shared.
DMPs are required for all NSF proposals, uploaded as a Supplementary Document in the FastLane.gov proposal submission system. They can be up to two pages long and should describe
- the kind of data you will gather
- how you’ll format the data and metadata (metadata is documentation about what your primary data are)
- what policies will govern the access and use of your data by others
- how you’ll protect privacy, confidentiality, security, and intellectual property
- who would be interested in accessing your data and in what ways they might use it
- your plans for archiving the data and preserving access to them
To learn more about data management plans, check out these resources:
- The ATE Central Handbook includes a sample data management plan and other helpful resources.
- The NSF’s Directorate for Education and Human Resources guidelines for data management plans.
Lori Wingate 
Executive Director, The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University
Lori has a Ph.D. in evaluation and more than 20 years of experience in the field of program evaluation. She is co-principal investigator of EvaluATE and leads and a variety of evaluation projects at WMU focused on STEM education, health, and higher education initiatives. Dr. Wingate has led numerous webinars and workshops on evaluation in a variety of contexts, including CDC University and the American Evaluation Association Summer Evaluation Institute. She is an associate member of the graduate faculty at WMU.
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EvaluATE is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers 0802245, 1204683, 1600992, and 1841783. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed on this site are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.