American Hospital Association Annual Survey Database 2009

The Boston College Libraries are happy to offer the American Hospital Association Annual Survey Database to the Boston College Community.

This database contains comprehensive hospital data from 6,500 hospitals surveyed about their operations. Topics include: demographics, organizational structure, facilities and services, utilization data, community orientation indicators, physician arrangements, managed care relationships and expenses.

The wealth of data will be of use to many subject areas besides the health care fields. Social work, sociology, and education are interested in how health care affects people in the community and in the quality of their lives. Psychologists would want to know what services are available in the psychiatric care units, both on an inpatient and outpatient basis. The data can be used to track health care trends and inform health care policy proposals. The economic, financial and business aspects of health care are apparent. Communications and the media cover all of these aspects of health care data. The uses of this date are limitless.

Both Barbara Mento and ITS Research Services are available for assistance.

The Reference Desk Staff will ask the user to sign a license agreement, then log-on the user to the AHA ASD software. Users will be asked to log off when finished with the AHA ASD database. Printing will follow the same directions as for GIS.

Please let us know if you have any questions

Barbara Mento, Data/GIS Librarian

ICPSR Summer Data Science Courses 2012

The ICPSR Summer Program is offering three workshops this year focused on data science and data services. Please click on the course titles below for full descriptions and information on enrolling.

• Applied Data Science: Managing Data for Re-use, July 23-27, 2012 (New course)
This workshop will explore and apply best practices in data management and curation across domains, including effective documentation practices, repository requirements and assessment, tracking data re-use, and how to create, comply with, and evaluate data management plans. The workshop is for individuals interested or actively engaged in the management and curation of research data, particularly data scientists, data managers and analysts, librarians, archivists, and data stewards and curators.
• Assessing and Mitigating Disclosure Risk: Essentials for Social Science, July 30-August 3, 2012 (New course)
This course will address ways researchers and data managers can safeguard respondent confidentiality in shared data, including public-use vs. restricted-use files, online analysis systems with automatic disclosure protection controls, and tools to assess and document disclosure risk.
• Providing Social Science Data Services: Strategies for Design and Operation, August 6-10, 2012
This workshop is structured around a five-stage data life cycle model focused on data production, data dissemination, repositories, discovery, and repurposing. Presentations on data curation activities will be used to discuss local data service issues, and computer exercises will demonstrate service activities. The workshop is for individuals who manage or support local services for ICPSR and other research data for quantitative analysis, including anyone who is new to providing social science data services or who is seeking to revitalize an existing service. The information will also be useful to those responsible for providing access to research data in domains outside the social sciences.

All courses and workshops will take place at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.