HEAL 2002 (SJ) Guide Ask Us

What to consider when searching for data and statistics

1. Ask yourself who would be interested in data/statistics on the topic. Seeking out those organizations/people can be a good place to start looking.
2. Consider why the organizations/authors created or collected the data/statistics. Do they have any bias or agenda?
3. Look at the methodology and consider what's included about how the data was collected. Does anything raise concerns or should be taken into consideration?

Health-related data and statistics sources

We've compiled different resources where you can locate reliable data and statistics sources. Finding these sources can be tricky sometimes so it helps to have some places to get started. 

• UNB Libraries Lists of Data & Statistical Sources (includes open, publicly available data from Canadian, provincial/territorial/municipal, foreign countries & international sources)
• UNB Libraries Health (Government Information) Guide (includes links to sites with health information that may contain data, statistics

OECD iLibrary > search under Themes or Statistics for worldwide data on a variety of topics. Note: this is not publicly available data and can only be accessed through UNB Libraries' subscription. 

Statista is a database that aggregates data and statistics from worldwide sources on a large variety of topics. Statistics and data can also be downloaded in PNG, PDF, Excel, or Powerpoint formats for use in infographics and presentations. Here's a short (3mins) video with an example of how to search Statista for health data:

Other sources of finding data and statistics:

• Search for datasets through Google Dataset Search
• Advanced Google searching for grey literature (video)

Canada

• Canadian Institute for Health Information (access data and reports)
  • This site can be challenging to navigate, and often it's easier to google your topic and include CIHI in your search or do a site search in Google
  • Most countries have a publicly available website like this for their health data, try googling for a specific country and health data or health statistics, or ask a librarian for help
• Canadian Institute for Health Information - Your Health System (allows you to see how health systems perform across Canada, look up provinces, cities, or hospitals for infographics with various statistics)
• Statistics Canada 
  • Browse information on a specific subject (including health)
  • Interact with data (data visualization, infographics, thematic maps)
  • Data sets, tables, microdata

This 2mins video shows an example of accessing and manipulating a StatCan data set:

• Health Data (Government of Canada)
  • Health Infobase: Health data in Canada (data tools, infographics, charts and blogs about Health info in Canada)
  • Heath Research Data: Resources (Canadian Institutes for Health Research
• First Nations Information Governance Centre Data Online (Results from First Nations Regional Health Survey (FNRHS, or RHS) and the First Nations Regional Early Childhood, Education and Employment Survey (FNREEES)
• Federated Research Data Repository (research datasets from researchers affiliated with Canadian institutions)
• Community-based Research Centre - Our Stats dashboard (data on GBT2Q Canadians from the Sex Now survey)

United States

• CDC National Center for Health Statistics
• Health Data.gov (includes data sets)
• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Data & Surveys
• Data Discovery (National Library of Medicine)
• List of some specific US data sets (Berkeley Library)
• Publicly available sources of data for health and social determinants of health (University of Pittsburgh) 

Intergovernmental/International

• Our World in Data (publicly available data)
• World Health Organization Global Health Observatory
• Pan American Health Organization Data & Statistics
• World Bank Health Data
• UNdata (Selected statistics from the entire UN system. Summary tables cover agriculture, population, industry, national accounts, energy, health, human development, trade, refugees, education, employment, and technology)
• UN Environmental Open Data
• Global Burden of Disease Portal (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) 
• EuroStat: Health (European Commission)
• NHS Statistics (UK's Department of Health)
• Global Health Data Exchange
• Human Mortality Database

How do I read research articles?

Reading journal articles can take some practice. Since they're written for other experts in a field, there may be parts of them that you don't completely understand and that's okay! Here are some tips on how to approach reading journal articles (hint - you don't have to read the whole thing, and you'll likely read!)

• NSCU Libraries. (2009, July 13). Anatomy of a scholarly article. https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/scholarly-articles/ (interactive)
• Forsmire, Michael. (n.d.). How to read a scientific paper. Purdue University Libraries. https://www.lib.purdue.edu/sites/default/files/libraries/engr/Tutorials/Newest%20Scientific%20Paper.pdf

Western University. (2012, April 26). How to read a scholarly article. [Video]. YouTube. 2:34mins

How do I critique research articles?

As you're learning about different research methods, there are certain questions you can ask yourself as you read research articles to start judging the quality of the research. Not all published research is of high quality, and it takes understanding how research is conducted to be able to tell whether a study is high quality or crap. 

Reading and critiquing research - video (20mins)

General questions to consider:

• What's the study about? What is the research question, or purpose/aim of the study?
• What's the approach? What kind of study was conducted to address the research question?
• Are the authors clear in what they seek to do with this study? Do they clearly state the research purpose? Do they address how the study relates to published literature on this topic? Does this study fill a gap in the literature, build on or refute existing research?
• Do the authors' address why they did this type of study? Is the study design appropriate for this type of question? 
• Is data collection clearly explained? Could someone recreate the methods from this information? Does the collected data address the research question?
• What are the author's results? Is the data analysis explained well? Is it clear how the themes and conclusions come from the data? What are the author's main findings and are they relevant to the aims of the study? Have the authors provided enough details and data for other researchers to recreate the analysis? 
• Do the results support the conclusion? 
• Do the authors acknowledge limitations of their study?
• Are there any conflicts of interest noted?

Critical appraisal checklists:

These are checklists for specific types of research studies. They can be helpful to provide more questions to consider for different study designs. 

• University of Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine
• CASP checklists
• JBI critical appraisal tools

How can I tell if something is a reliable and/or scholarly source?

It can be challenging when you're starting out with academic research to determine what kinds of sources you're finding, and whether they're the type of sources you need for your paper. Library databases and resources are the usual places to find scholarly sources, but you can find credible, scholarly sources through Google and other resources. Over time you'll learn how to distinguish scholarly from non-scholarly sources, and how to evaluate all types of sources for credibility. 

These two handouts provide guidance on questions to ask yourself as you look for sources for assignments. Some evaluation will be easy and quick to do, and some will require you to read more of your source, or search for more information outside of the source to verify the accuracy or authority of the source. Use these tools and videos, and contact a librarian to help sharpen your evaluation skills.

• 10 Questions for Evaluating Information
• Handout on using RADAR framework to evaluate sources (University of Waterloo)

Brock University Library. (2021, September 29). Evaluating sources with RADAR. [Video]. YouTube. 3:21mins

Sims Library Research Help. (2022, July 14). Identifying source type for web sources. [Video]. YouTube. 8:05mins

   It's important to evaluate the background sources you consult.

Consider who published or authored the information, what the purpose of it is, and how old is the information. Wikipedia can be useful to get to know more about topics but should not be cited in academic assignments. Look at the references to follow the information back to the primary sources, and cite those instead.

Citing Different Types of Sources

The APA Publication Manual provides guidance for citing different kinds of information, including reports, government documents, statistics, and other types of sources you'll find on websites. You'll find examples of these in Chapter 10: Reference Examples, particularly these sections:

• 10.4 Reports and Gray Literature pg. 329
• 10.9 Data sets pg. 337
• 10.16 Webpages and Websites pg. 350

If you're unsure of whether the source should be cited as a website or as a report or something else, take a look at the examples within this chapter to see what looks most appropriate for your source. If you're still stuck feel free to reach out to me or your instructor. 

Other guides for citing government documents and statistics:

• APA Style (from Purdue Online Writing Lab)
• Brief Guide to Citing Canadian Government Documents and Statistics (from Queen's University)
• How to Cite Statistics Canada Products (from Statistics Canada)
  • Example: Statistics Canada. (2021). Table 21-10-0011-01 Commercial and industrial machinery and equipment rental and leasing, sales by type of client [Data table]. https://doi.org/10.25318/2110001101-eng
• Citing Statista: Statista is a statistics portal that brings together data/information from 18,000 different sources. If Statista notes a source, then the source should be used as the author.
  • Example: Marketplace Pulse. (2020, June). Most popular categories among handmade Etsy sellers worldwide as of June 2020, by share of sellers [Graph]. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1019956/global-leading-categories-handmade-etsy-sellers/ 

Finding permalinks to use in your citations

For regular websites it's okay to copy the url/link from your browser and use that in your citation. When you click on it again, you'll see that it opens the page you want it to. This isn't the same when you find sources through databases, so you need to know where to find permalinks or DOIs (depending on what you need to include).

• Getting a permalink from UNB Worldcat (search box on library homepage)
• Getting a permalink from an EBSCO database (like CINAHL)
• Getting a permalink from a Proquest database (like Nursing & Allied Health)

What's a DOI, how to find them, and when to use them

• APA Style: DOIs and URLs
• DOI Help: Digital Object Identifiers DOIs)

Drake Memorial Library. (2021, January 20). Find the digital object identifier (DOI) of an article. [Video]. YouTube. 1:29mins