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Communicating Data for Impact

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Create meaningful impact With Your Data

Supplying the right audience with the right amount of data in the right format increases the likelihood that a target audience will pay attention.

Let’s start with a story

1854, Crimean peninsula

British and French soldiers were engaged with Russia in a battle over religion and territory. Soldiers were dying in droves.

A Young British Nurse

volunteered to serve in the military hospitals in Turkey, where injured soldiers were transported for care. When she arrived, the sanitary conditions in the hospitals were horrendous — as were the manner in which the hospitals were collecting data about their patients.

Florence Nightingale

the young nurse from the story, did something truly remarkable — she partnered with the accomplished statistician William Farr to analyze the hospital mortality data.
“To understand God's thoughts, we must study statistics for these are the measure of His purpose.” Florence Nightingale
“You complain that your report would be dry. The dryer the better. Statistics should be the driest of all reading,” William Farr

Nightingale created polar area diagrams

often referred to as Nightingale’s “Rose” or “Coxcombs” – which used colored wedges to represent causes of death in the army during each month of the war.

Data visualization persuaded her audience.

Her report and graphics had a significant impact on military hospital practices and conditions and saved countless lives.

Communicating Data For Impact

To maximize impact, we must first identify the audiences we want to address, understand their needs and level of sophistication around data, and then provide them with the appropriate presentation of data.
Data Consumer
Interested individuals consume the data. If the data trigger action, these individuals may move into a more active role. They typically have little data and domain expertise.

Examples: News consumers, interested public

Looking for: Specific data points, trends, developments

Best reached through: Infographics, declarative/narrative visualizations, illustrative diagrams

Data Actor
Data actors act on and leverage the data to drive change. They have significant clout, staff and domain knowledge, but often only limited time.

Examples: Policy and decision makers in governments, NGO/nonprofits, and corporations

Looking for: Curated datasets, e.g., by topic, country, region, etc.

Best reached through: Press releases, reports/briefs, limited interactive visualizations, search data tools

Data Promoter
Data promoters leverage data to create additional value. They inform, educate or build businesses around data. Since they are multiplying the audience for a given (set of) datasets, they can play a key role in influencing Data Actors, Data Consumers or both and creating impact with the data.

Examples: Journalists, bloggers, advocates, web/software developers, entrepreneurs, data geeks

Looking for: Comprehensive datasets showing global trends, data by topic, country, etc.

Best reached through: Query tools, exploratory visualizations, application programming interface (API)

Data Analyst
Analysts use data to create deeper understanding, while informing data actors and consumers. They have a deep domain knowledge, extensive data knowledge, and will review and condense large amounts of data for a given topic.

Examples: Domain experts at international, national, local levels; often staffers for decisions makers

Looking for: Comprehensive datasets showing global trends, data by topic, country, etc.

Best reached through: Query tools, exploratory visualizations

Data Researcher
Researchers work in the trenches to collect, analyze, and synthesize data for the groups above; they often perform data collection and analysis themselves.

Examples: Researchers, academics, analysts, modelers

Looking for: Full database; source data & methods (input for dataset)

Best reached through: Query tools, exploratory visualizations, data catalogue, data repository, visuals to explain the methods

Global Burden of Disease

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) is a study that measures the impact of diseases, injuries, and risk factors that shorten lives or create health loss through short- or long-term disabilities. GBD 2010 covers 187 countries, provides data for 291 diseases and injuries, and looks at 67 risk factors. 3 different metrics with a results dataset of more than 1 billion data points.

See how GBD displays the data in the right format for the right audiences.

View the Case Study

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