Official Site of The State of New Jersey
Definitions of NJSHAD Terms and Acronyms
Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Build | Building a query means choosing a dataset, measure, variables, and values to display as a query result table. |
| Categorical Variable | A categorical variable has non-numeric values and records into which of several categories (or groups) a person or thing falls. Examples of categorical variables include gender, race, ethnicity, and place of residence. |
| Count | A count is a measure of the number of something. For example, the death count is the number of deaths and the low birth weight count is the number of infants born with low birth weight (< 2500 grams). |
| Dataset | A dataset in an NJSHAD query is an electronic file of "raw" data that has not been filtered or tabulated, with the exception of removal of all personal identifying information. Other names are flat file, micro-level data, record-level data, or individual-level data. |
| EPHT | Environmental Public Health Tracking NJDOH's EPHT grant from CDC has funded NJSHAD since 2007. |
| Filter | To filter means to narrow down what will be displayed in a query result table by selecting only certain values for some variables. Examples of filtering would include choosing to query only gender = "female" and age = "15-44 years old." Your results would not include any males or women under 15 or over 44 years of age. |
| Geographic Area of Residence | This is an all-encompassing term for state, county, and municipality. |
| IBIS-PH | Indicator-Based Information System for Public Health NJSHAD was adapted from Utah's IBIS-PH. |
| Indicator | Indicator is short for "public health status indicator report" or "public health status indicator profile." |
| Interface | An interface is any of the NJSHAD query pages where you can select items from drop-down menus to build a query. |
| Measure | A measure is a type of statistic. Common measures are count, percent, crude rate, age-adjusted rate, and average age. |
| Municipality | This is an all-encompassing term for New Jersey's sub-county political divisions, which can be cities, towns, townships, villages, or boroughs. |
| NJDOH | New Jersey Department of Health |
| NJSHAD | New Jersey State Health Assessment Data |
| Outcome | A health outcome is the end result of a health condition. Examples of outcomes include low birth weight, preterm birth, death, or a hospital visit. |
| Profile | See Indicator. |
| Quantitative Variable | A quantitative variable has numerical values for which arithmetic operations such as sums or averages make sense. Examples of quantitative variables include age and birth weight. |
| Query | Query is short for Web-based Data Query System. The NJSHAD query system consists of deidentified micro-level datasets that are accessed via a web interface where the end user chooses the dataset, measure, variables, and values of interest. |
| Value | The actual number that describes a particular variable. For example, 65 years old is a value for the variable "age." |
| Variable | Any characteristic of a person or thing that can be expressed as a number or categorized. There are two kinds of variables: Quantitative (numerical) and Categorical. |
| Web-based Data Query System (WDQS) | WDQSs provide user access on the web through dynamic interfaces to data pertaining to population health held on WDQS web servers. WDQSs enable users to formulate queries (in other words, a dynamic interface) within the bounds of the functionalities available on the specific WDQS. Accessibility to the WDQS is on the web through a standard web browser. WDQSs produce numeric tabulations to user queries and also generate various statistics. (Friedman and Parrish, 2008) |