Academic & Research Institutions

Academic and research institutions are frequently a source for official government statistics at the national, state and local levels. Their constituents include private and public organizations, as well as individual researchers. Typically these groups rely on the latest U.S. census microdata to support critical planning and budget justifications, as well as proposal development and investigative analysis.

Quickly responding to constituent questions is often a challenge because it requires working through massive amounts of complex data and data formats. This problem is compounded by the fact that universities and research groups do not have the IT staff or computing resources to handle complex computing needs - especially when the requestor has a short deadline.

PDQ-Explore helps universities and research institutions overcome these challenges by offering powerful, rapid analytical processing capabilities without the complexity or overhead typically associated with other analytical solutions. Whether analysts and researchers are using PDQ-Explore and U.S. census microdata to develop the background for a proposal or to directly investigate a research topic, PDQ-Explore provides fingertip access to a wealth of information residing in huge public microdata sets.

PDQ-Explore for in-class instruction

PDQ-Explore is also an excellent in-class resource for professors teaching courses in population studies, sociology, public policy, economics, history and other disciplines that require analysis of public data sets spanning the past 150 years. With PDQ-Explore, professors can engage students by allowing them to directly explore huge data sets within a classroom setting, creating a dynamic that increases understanding of how public data can be utilized to solve both public and private sector problems.

PDQ-Explore helps Academic and Research Institutions achieve the following:

  • Rapidly provide national, state and local public data analysis to private and public organizations, as well as individual researchers
  • Perform follow-on, deep-dive investigative analysis through iterative ad hoc queries
  • Easily extend usage to other staff members through an intuitive, Web-based UI
  • Better leverage staff expertise and reduce time spent on data management
  • Become an authoritative resource for latest government statistics and other public data sources
  • Create engaging classroom instruction by letting students query live public data

Designed expressly for in-depth investigative analysis on data sets comprising even billions of records, PDQ-Explore's iterative ad hoc querying capabilities allow users to explore data, gaining knowledge with each new query. Unlike other statistical packages, PDQ-Explore doesn't require you to know exactly what you're looking for before you begin your work. Data can be queried, and based upon results returned, questions can be further refined. With PDQ-Explore, researchers, analysts and students can stay focused on getting answers to their questions - not on managing or manipulating the data.