The SGIM Research Dataset Compendium is designed to assist investigators conducting research on existing datasets, with a particular emphasis on health services research, clinical epidemiology, and research on medical education.  The detailed information provided by the SGIM compendium distinguishes it from other web-based compendia, which typically provide lists of datasets but give little information about their strengths and weaknesses and the insights of experienced users about making best use of the data.

About

This site is a project of the SGIM Research Committee since 2008. Information in this site was initially compiled under the direction of Michael Steinman (chief developer), with assistance from John Ayanian, Ken Covinsky, Christina Wee, Stacey Jackson, Bruce Landon, Mitchell Wong, Amy Woodward, and others. Alex Smith took over leadership of the compendium in 2010 and expanded the resource in 2012 to include proprietary datasets.

Special thanks to Sneha Patil, Julie Machulsky, and Francine Jetton for background research, website development, technical assistance, and support, and to John Ayanian and Ellen McCarthy for resource development. In addition, we thank the many people who volunteered their service as dataset experts.

How to use this site:

This site is divided into four main sections.  Users are encouraged to browse the different sections of the site rather than focus only on one area.

• User’s guide to working with secondary data: Tips for working with secondary data.  
• Public datasets: Descriptions and expert evaluations of high-value datasets
• Proprietary datasets:  Collaborate with senior SGIM researchers using their proprietary datasets
• Other dataset compendia, repositories, and resources:  Brief descriptions and links to other dataset compendia, data repositories, and miscellaneous resources.

Please contact the SGIM staff liaison to the Research Committee if you have any questions about the dataset compendium site.