Thank you, GlobalData!

Dearest darling GlobalData, We adore you for devoting a bookmark-worthy Media Center to those of us who are perpetually jonesing for great industry news articles.  You must have been following our blog entries like this one and this one, because you know that the best way to our hearts- ok actually probably the left hemisphere’s of our brains- is through freely available news and analysis.

You woo us not just with the standard page of Press Releases but also with an Expert Insights page covering categories like Alternative Energy and Medical Devices.  Your headliner titles like, “Hydropower's Hold over Indian Renewables Market Set to Decline” make us all giddy and flustered with all that forecasting.  And we love a company that is open to communication; email alerts for emergent research in our category of choice is such a turn-on.

Of course you might break up with us when you figure out that we librarians can’t afford to actually buy any of your full-length market research reports or take you up on one of those consultations, but there are plenty of fish in the sea.

Hugs and kisses,

bizologie

The CDC Under Magnification: Part Two

Wouldn’t you know, watching the very smart movie Contagion last night would get me psyched to write this second installment on the CDC?  This part deals with the National Center for Health Statistics, a CDC subset that works to, “compile statistical information to guide actions and policies to improve the health of our people. …Working with partners throughout the health community, we use a variety of approaches to efficiently obtain information from the sources most able to provide information” (About). For someone trying to do business research through the NCHS website for the first time, be forewarned that these pages, understandably dense with information, have a nearly overwhelming barrage of links, terminology, and acronyms-that-all-sound-the-same.  My advice is to acclimate to the site’s organization by starting at the beginning:  use the left-side navigation menu to peruse the NCHS’s various Surveys and Data Collection Systems’s sub-pages on an individual basis to see which one might offer information that’s relevant to your research.  If a particular survey sounds promising, then also stick to that left-menu’s Survey Results & Products link, or any comparable link, when they're available.

In this manner, I managed to drill down to a site that breaks the National Hospital Discharge Survey, one of the  more exhaustive surveys, into spreadsheets of information based on popular aggregating factors.  (Alas, I don't know if this url and my last link are persistent).  For example, I downloaded a chart that gives me totals for “all listed procedures” from hospitals by category and age, meaning I see things like the number of appendectomies performed in the 15-44 age group.  This type of information is great for those trying to compile a numerical justification for their newfangled product or pill.

The CDC Under Magnification: Part One

We’re lucky to live in a country where our government collects and disseminate scads of information for free, case in point, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Of course nothing is easy with our government, and the CDC website is no exception, mostly due to its sheer scale.  So, having nothing better to do, being kind and selfless, I decided to spend some quality time frolicking through the CDC.gov realm in order to point out a couple highlights that are relevant to business researchers. First and foremost, the Features -> Data & Statistics Page lends itself particularly well to background and/or market validation types of research.  It has been going strong since 2007, and it covers a surprisingly wide array of topics concerning our health.  Interested in opening up a recovery center?  Check out the 2011 Painkiller Overdoses report.  Selling hearing aids?  Read the 2010 or 2011 Infant Hearing Loss report.   Manufacturing air conditioners?  See the 2009 Working in Hot Environments report.

These reports are presented in a format akin to the brief executive summary, with a sprinkling of impactful charts scattered among a handful of paragraphs (including citations).  The bottom of the reports will also feature a series of links to related resources that might, depending on the institution, freely provide their own information too.