Global Health Data Exchange Updates

The Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) has announced a relaunch with enhanced navigation and additional features, including improved navigation, background information on countries, data series, and organizations. The advanced search allows users to search specific queries by geography, time, data type, keyword, and data source. Data can also be sorted on whether the actual research data is publicly and freely available. An announcement about the new features in version 2 is available online.

In addition, search results can now be sorted by the year that data collection started, and can be easily exported. Geographies now have a time component to reflect historical changes to country names or boundaries over (e.g., the Soviet Union).

Launched in March 2011 by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, the GHDx is the world’s largest catalog and repository of health-related data. It currently contains more than 8000 records with carefully researched information about data, including a standardized English title, local-language title, geography and time covered by the data, a suggested citation and information about current data providers. In addition, detailed keywords provide information about the topics that are covered by the data. Many datasets can be downloaded directly from the GHDx.

Teaching Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data

If you're going to be in the vicinity of Essex, UK in September, the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) is hosting a free half-day workshop at the UK Data Archive "aimed at best practices in teaching qualitative analysis of secondary data."

For more information, check out their webpage: http://www.esds.ac.uk/qualidata/news/eventdetail.asp?id=3306