Help: 

Note: the following questions were generated by people using CHAD to find data. If you have questions that are not covered below, please contact us  - it's likely others will have the same question, and we would like to add your question to this list.

Q: How do I find what I'm looking for on this help page? 

A: An easy way to scan through this page to find the answer to your question is to click on "Edit" (upper left-hand corner of your screen), "Find," and then type in the word you're looking for.

Q: Search Strategies: How do I get started looking for data in (CHAD)?

A: On the search page (you do not have to select anything on the home page, just click on "Submit"), you must select:

• A geographic area for which you want data, and 
• A category of data: behavioral risks, deaths, illness and injury, environment, maternal and child health, population, or social conditions.
• You may also narrow down your request by selecting a specific keyword, source of data, age group, gender, race, ethnicity (whether Hispanic or not), or year of the data. Note that the more you narrow down your request, the less likely that you will find data that matches all of your criteria - you may want to start out just selecting a category and maybe one other criteria. 
• If you get too much information, you can 1) use the Edit/Find feature to look for a specific word in the list of data choices, or 2) go back and narrow down your request. 
• If you request data and get a message that says, "There were no tables matching your selection criteria," you either have made too specific a request and need to make it more general, or the data may not be available in the database. Try using a more general request before concluding that the data is not available.
• For a good overview of the data available, review the County Health Profile, which is listed as the first table for most searches. This profile includes key population, pregnancy and births, mortality, morbidity, educational level, health workforce, and community health indicators. 
• Note that only Census data is available below the county level (it is available at the zip code and township levels).
• Caveat about interpreting the data: in the rural counties of Western NC, there may be very small numbers of specific illnesses or deaths; it is not advisable to draw conclusions about differences between counties or over time if you have numbers less than 10.

Q: How do I know what category the data I'm looking for would be listed under?

A: We have required that you select a data category to keep CHAD from presenting you with very large lists of the tables and line items available. It may be challenging to figure out which categories we've used for the data you are looking for. Here is a general breakdown of what is listed under each category (note that there is overlap among categories):
Behavioral risks: Smoking, alcohol related deaths, child and maternal overweight, maternal smoking and drinking, short-interval births, prenatal care, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, carrying weapons or substances to school
Environment: Lead screening, municipal funding for sidewalks and bikeways, secondhand smoke, health workforce data (number physicians, nurses, dentists, etc.)
Illness and injury: AIDS, asthma prevalence and asthma hospitalizations, alcohol and drug hospitalizations, mental health hospitalizations, cancer, domestic violence, sexually transmitted diseases, motor vehicle crashes, dental decay, lead poisoning, low Hgb/Hct, communicable diseases (such as hepatitis or tuberculosis), child abuse, bicycle and motorcycle injuries, sentinel events (illnesses or injuries where just one of that type is noteworthy)
Maternal and child: Birth numbers and demographics, location of births and birth attendants (MD, midwife, etc.), birth risk factors, newborn conditions, short interval births, low birth weights, Cesarean sections, births to smoking mothers, teen pregnancy, breastfeeding, maternal overweight, fertility and abortion rates,
infant (<1 year) mortality and neonatal (<28 days) death rates, fetal death demographics and risk factors
Population: Total numbers of residents, families, and households; 2005 and 2010 population projections; breakdowns by race, whether Hispanic or not, gender, age, type of work, type of living quarters (home, nursing home, etc.), level of education, telephone availability at home; number of households with people over 65 or under 18 living in them; total number of students by race and gender
Social Conditions: Child care enrollment, school performance and SAT scores, drop out and retention rates, educational attainment, type of employment, unemployment rates, household income, poverty, AFDC and Food Stamps, SSI and general public assistance, telephone availability at home, crime and prison admissions, juvenile court appearances, school violence, domestic violence and child abuse, language spoken at home, health insurance status, health workforce data (number physicians, nurses, dentists, etc.), voter registration

Q: I keep getting an error message that says "A Runtime Error has occurred. Do you wish to Debug? Line: 14 Error: Syntax error Yes/ no." What's the problem?

A: This error message will not affect your ability to find data - you can simply click "no." However, to keep this message from popping up, click on "Tools" at the top of your screen, then "Internet Options," click on the "Advanced" tab, and check the box beside "Disable script debugging" and uncheck the box beside "Display a notification about every script error."

Q: What are "table (spreadsheet) titles" and "individual line titles"? I see these terms used at the bottom of the search page. How do I know what I want?

A: The data that we have included in CHAD came in the form of spreadsheets from different sources. For example, the Census data listed telephone availability broken down by race. The table of that information shows telephone availability for all races listed by the Census; the individual lines of that information show each race separately (i.e. the individual lines break down the table). The easiest thing is to look at the tables. If you want to narrow further, you can go back and choose individual lines. But selecting individual lines first may overwhelm you with a lot of information which may seem out of context. 

Q: Help! I'm overwhelmed! I just want to get a sense of what's going on in my county.

A: For a good overview, look at the County Health Profile, which is listed as the first table for most searches. This profile includes key population, pregnancy and births, mortality, morbidity, educational level, health workforce, and community health indicators. 

Q: In the County Health Profile, there's a bar chart listing causes of death. I notice the sum of each specific death listed doesn't equal the "Total Deaths - All Causes" number. Why not?

A: Note that these are rates of deaths per 100,000, rather than total numbers of incidents. This graph lists select causes of deaths rather than a comprehensive list. 

Q: I could not find data for a keyword and I can't believe you don't have that data. How do I find it?

A: We've tried to be comprehensive in our use of keywords. If you don't find what you're looking for, try synonyms of the keyword: e.g. for "adolescent," try "teen." Also try paring down the term you're using to one word: e.g. for "lead poisoning" try "lead," and for "hospitalizations" try "hospital." Or, try "dentists" instead of "dentist". If you write "teen pregnancy," CHAD will bring up items that list either of those terms as keywords. 

Q: What are the definitions for the terms you use?

A: Click on "Glossary" in the upper right-hand corner to find glossaries from each data source. Other key terms: "total" means the total number of incidents or events as opposed to percentages or rates. "All" means all the subcomponents combined (e.g. "all teen pregnancy" is "white teen pregnancy" and "minority teen pregnancy" combined). "Rate" means how many incidents or events per a given number of people (we sometimes use per 100 (percent), per 1000, per 10,000, or per 100,000 - the rate is specified).

Q: Why does CHAD sometimes show percentages and rates, and sometimes just show total numbers of incidents?

A: We present the data that was available to us. We did not calculate percentages or rates ourselves, except for some Vital Records and Census data. 

Q: What other data resources are there out there?

A: Click on "Links" in the upper right-hand corner to see an annotated list of other good sources of data at the county level and to connect to those web sites. If you know of other good sources of data available at the county level, let us know! 

Q: I'd like graphs on these data - how do I get those?

A: We plan to make graphs of the data available in the future. Right now, the only graphs shown are in the county health profiles.

Q: Why don't you include Western North Carolina rates for a lot of these data?

A: We don't show WNC rates for data that is available as percentages or rates (i.e. where we would need to weight rates according to county population as we calculated a regional rate), we just show WNC total numbers of incidents or events. 

Q: What about data for other counties besides these 16?

A: CHAD only includes data for the sixteen counties served by MAHEC. However, you can go to the data sources (web site addresses are included with the data) and find information on other NC counties.

Q: Does it matter in what order I select items from the search page?

A: No.

Q: What if I want to find data that aren't in the database?

A: If you request data and get a message that says, "There were no tables matching your selection criteria," you either have made too specific a request and need to make it more general, or the data may not be available in the database. Try using a more general request before concluding that the data is not available. If you have tried several different ways of finding the data and cannot, you can contact us. We will tell you whether the data is available in CHAD or elsewhere and can help you get it.

Q: How does CHAD decide what year's data to show? 

A: CHAD generally includes only the most recent data available. However, as new data comes out, we will retain the data currently in the system, so comparisons of different years will be more possible over time.

Q: When CHAD lists the table or line items, are the grey lines highlighting data that is most relevant to me? 

A: No, we're just alternating colors so that it's easier for you to read a long list of tables or line items.

Q: Why is Hispanic listed separately from race?

A: Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race; Hispanics can be white, Native American, of African descent, etc. The Census and other sources of data generally list Hispanic separately from race.

Q: Why does the race category include specific races and then also non-white and minority?

A: The different sources of data break down race differently: some list specific races, some just present white vs. nonwhite or white vs. minority data.

Q: I can't find what I'm looking for. Does that mean you don't have it, or that I just can't find it the way I'm searching?

A: If you request data and get a message that says, "There were no tables matching your selection criteria," you either have made too specific a request and need to make it more general, or the data may not be available in the database. Try using a more general request before concluding that the data is not available. 

Q: Do you have more data on some counties than on others?

A: No, we present only data that is available for all counties in North Carolina. However some other data sources may have more information on some counties than others, for example the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the American Lung Association's ozone data.

Q: Why are there percentages for some data, but not for others?

A: For the most part, we have presented data the way they were made available by the data sources. Sometimes they presented percentages, sometimes rates per 1000, sometimes just total numbers of incidents.

Q: How do I tell whether these differences between my county and the state are statistically significant?

A: There are several different formulas to measure whether differences are statistically significant. A general rule the state uses is that when the county rate is 15% greater or lesser than the state rate, it is noteworthy. Another general rule is that if one rate is double or half of the other, the difference is significant. A caveat about interpreting the dat

A: in the rural counties of western NC, there often are very small numbers of specific illnesses or deaths; it is not advisable to draw conclusions about differences between counties or over time if you have numbers less than 10.

Q: The county number showed up higher than the state number for the data I was viewing - how is this possible?

A: If you are comparing rates (per 100, 1000, 10,000, or 100,000), the county rate may be higher than the state rate. This shouldn't happen if you're comparing total numbers of incidents per geographic unit.

Q: Why is the rate exceeding the total number of incidents for the data I'm looking at?

A: If you're looking at a rate per 1000 for data for which there aren't 1000 population (e.g. teen females aged 15-17 in a rural county), the calculated rate may exceed the total number of incidents in the county. 

Q: I tried to find Census data at the zip code (sub-county) level, and several zip codes showed 2 letters at the end. Is this a typo? 

A: No, having 2 letters at the end of a zip code means that the zip code crosses over county lines. * Note that you cannot get data for a zip code that crosses county lines (the data will always show "0" - this does not mean that no people matched your selection criteria, it means that no data is available. 

Q: I have a lot of data needs. Can you help me with a larger data project?

A: Yes! Contact us and we can give you the names of groups that can help you:

• Analyze and prepare graphs of existing data
• Design and conduct surveys to collect new data about behaviors, service needs, and/or access to care
• Conduct (or train community members to conduct) listening sessions to hear about community priorities, needs, and assets
• Examine your own organization's data systems to discover patterns, relationships, and trends that measure your organization's performance, answer questions, and illustrate a point 
• Synthesize existing and newly collected data, qualitative and quantitative data into one comprehensive assessment
• Present a comprehensive assessment to community groups

Q: Why can't I get a community profile for Western NC?

A: We have only prepared community profiles at the county level, and compare those rates to NC rates. There are so few rates available at the WNC regional level that we did not prepare a separate regional profile.

Q: My printouts are being cut off on the right column and I can't see all the data. What do I do?

A: You will need to change your page set up. Click on "File" in the upper left-hand corner of your screen, then click on "Page Set Up." Under "Margins," set your Left and Right margins to 0.25. This setting will allow you to print out the entire page. 

Q: You explain that Census has demographics, Vital Records has births and deaths data, and Sheps Center has health workforce data. What kind of data is in the County Data Book?

A: The County Data Book is prepared by the NC Department of Health and Human Services and includes a lot of different kinds of data on pregnancy, births, mortality (deaths), morbidity (illnesses and injuries), community health, health resources, education, and sentinel events (i.e. events that are noteworthy even if there is just one of them, such as cases of whooping cough or maternal deaths). 

Q: Why do you show population data for 2005 and 2010?

A: These data are projections of population rates for 2005 and 2010, which, while estimates, may be helpful in planning programs for specific populations such as seniors, children, etc.