“Beyond 20/20 excels in creating Web-available database applications that are user friendly, attractive, and easy to learn, even for inexperienced users.”

Krista Scott-Dixon, Project Manager
York University

York University gathers Canadian statistical data on gender and work, and organizes the data into multidimensional tables that highlight particular complex relationships. The statistical tables enable researchers to focus in-depth on the level and form of women's and men's position in a given area of interest, such as immigration, or in relation to a dominant concept or thesis. Most of the data is from Statistics Canada surveys.

York University also has a library that contains bibliographies, papers, statistical tables, links to relevant theoretical and qualitative works, as well as quantitative studies. Its aim is to help researchers address their research questions through a feminist political economy lens and apply feminist methodology.

The Challenge: Fast, Accessible Data

York University needed to disseminate their library of data to university researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate students. They have 230 multidimensional tables from Statistics Canada, and additional tables built from other sources such as Excel and SPSS. The University required a solution that would allow its users to easily find and analyze the data. They also wanted their Excel and SPSS tables accessed through this same solution.

Aside from the data itself, York University was also interested in examining how the process and context of asking survey questions shapes the answers. How, for example, is the data collected? What questions are asked (or not asked) and why? Thus, they wanted to include explanations in the tables, links to survey documentation, and links to their library and thesaurus terminology, so users could better understand the concepts that form the tables.

The Solution – Beyond 20/20

To solve York University’s need to make data available to researchers, it turned to Beyond 20/20 and implemented the table building tool and Web dissemination solution: Beyond 20/20 Builder and Web Data Server (WDS).

The Beyond 20/20 Builder enables York University to convert its data from many different formats, to a Web-ready format. York University’s Excel and SPSS tables can simply be brought into Beyond 20/20 format with the Builder. Since Statistics Canada tables are already available in the Beyond 20/20 format, it eliminates a step for York University to publish the data to their site.

Once the data has been converted, it is published into WDS on York University’s Web site. Users can easily and quickly access the information, create their own reports, and analyze the data. They can even export these reports into Excel and CVS formats for further analysis.

Beyond 20/20 also answered York University’s requirement to include documentation, and link their library and thesaurus terminology. With its rich metadata features, Beyond 20/20 can provide this information as well as hyperlinks within the tables.

The Results

Beyond 20/20 allows York University to create and publish multidimensional tables, which is a key element in understanding complex relationships between dimensions. “Beyond 20/20 excels in creating Web-available database applications that are user friendly, attractive, and easy to learn, even for users that are not as familiar with quantitative data manipulation,” said Krista Scott-Dixon, Project Manager at York University. “The multidimensionality of the tables, and the easy customization through drag-and-drop or selecting dimension items with checkboxes, makes it very simple to highlight intricate data combinations. Beyond 20/20 provides a way for inexperienced users to work with data comfortably.”

With Beyond 20/20’s metadata feature, York University likes that they have the ability to link to other databases such as their library database. This allows the users to view the importance of the theoretical foundation behind the data.

Presently, York University’s site is accessed by researchers, graduate students and undergraduate students involved in the project. The Web site opened to the public in October 2004.

“We recommend Beyond 20/20 to others as it provides many excellent tools for manipulating and representing data”, said Krista Scott-Dixon. “We were able to reach our objectives with Beyond 20/20.”