Research guides: BTC1800H5: Research Workshop: Finding Health-Related Statistics and Data

STRATEGY #1: RESEARCH GUIDES

Many excellent research guides to healthcare statistics and data exist to streamline your research.

Curated by librarians or other data specialsts, these curated collections can help you find what you need.

UTM Library: Health Data Resources
Particularly useful for identifying sources of local or regional health data. Also includes some good guidance on data citations.
University of Toronto Libraries: Gerstein Sciene Information Centre: Health Statistics and Data
An excellent starting point for data-focused research.
Tufts Libraries: Hirsch Health Sciences Library
Another excellent guide to health statistics. Includes a useful set of links for world statistics as well for the US.

STRATEGY #2: SEARCH THE WEB

Consider using specialized search engines or the Advanced Search features of Google to find statistics or data.

Statista This link opens in a new window
A search engine or portal for data, licensed by the library. Includes statistics from national statistical agencies, non-profit organizations, government bodies, and commercial sources. Data can be downloaded into Excel or exported as a table or chart and easily integrated into presentations or reports.

Statista can also be used to identify sources for further research outside of the search engine.

Google Dataset Search
Launched in September 2018, this new search tool from Google searches open datasets from a broad range of providers including publishers, institutional research data repositories, individual researchers or organizations. The focus is on data from both the sciences and social sciences.
Zanran
A search engine that specializes in finding numeric or statistical data.
Open Data Network
Another search engine for open data.

Google's Advanced Search features can also be used to filter your search results to files in .xls and .csv formats.

To use this feature, enter your keywords in the search box together with filetype:[X]. An example might be:

"medication errors" hospital filetype:xls

STRATEGY #3: WHO CARES?

Think about WHO CARES enough to collect, analyze, publish and/or distribute data about a given topic? Who are the stakeholders in the topic you are targeting?

Organizations (maybe even individuals) who care may have data that goes undetected by search engines; by going directly to these sources and then browsing or searching these specific websites, you may save time and effort.

While the checklist below was developed specifically to help source market research, it can be used for other healthcare-related topics as well.

Checklist of Potential Sources of Market Research
Use this list to help you think about 'who cares' - who cares enough to collect, analyze, aggregate, publish or distribute data and insights about your market.