A quick reminder that we have pilot, one-year subscriptions to two "emerging technology" market report databases: Frost & Sullivan & BCC Research.  We'd love to hear your feedback!

Please send comments, concerns, and questions to me at mbodnar@sfu.ca.

<Click for some titles of recent reports in each database!>

Earlier this month I wrote about a new collection of practice datasets optimized for use in classroom exercises or in exam papers:  SAGE Research Methods Datasets.  I'm very pleased to announce that SFU researchers now have access to a companion resource: Sage Research Methods Video!  

<Click for more!>

We've just started a trial to Scopus and would love to hear what you think of it.

For those who don't know Scopus, it's a direct competitor to Web of Science (and perhaps to Google Scholar, depending on what you are trying to accomplish).  That is, Scopus is a very large citation database of peer-reviewed literature in journals, books, and conference proceedings across most research fields...

<Read on for more details!>

I see that IBISWorld has published an analysis of the possible effects of a US steel & aluminum tariff on Canadian industries and consumers:  Trump Tariff to Hit Consumers, Canadian Steel and Construction.

As I'm sure you could guess, such tariffs are expected to touch on many industries.  Here are direct links to IBISWorld reports on some ...

<Read on for links to industry and business environment reports!>

Thanks to support from KEY, SFU's Big Data Initiative, SFU researchers now have access to a collection of practice datasets optimized for use in classroom exercises or in exam papers:  Sage Research Methods Datasets.

  

This collection of teaching datasets can be used to support the teaching and independent learning of quantitative and qualitative analytical methods common in the social sciences. These are datasets taken from real research projects, but edited and cleaned for teaching purposes -- saving you hours sourcing and cleaning...

<Read on for links to a few examples of the datasets available, and more!>

Sometimes you need the big picture of an industry before you can dive in for deeper research: a brief history of the industry's development; a description of its structure; or a list of key countries and companies... just enough to guide the next steps in your analysis.

For those purposes (and more!) SFU researchers should check out our new online access to the 6th edition (2017) of the Encyclopedia of Global Industries.  [...]

To get a sense of the value of the Encyclopedia of Global Industries check out these entries:

• Amusement Parks

<Read on for more entries, links to related titles, and more!>

Hey entrepreneurship students!  Did you know that you have online access to hundreds of real business plans from throughout North America via the SFU Library?  We've recently purchased a few more volumes in the online Business Plans Handbook series -- bringing us up to 40 volumes in total.

[...] check out this small selection of the types of companies covered in the newest volumes:

• Adult Day Care Center
• Axe Throwing Club
• Digital Marketing Agency

<Read on to get to BPs for whiskey distilleries, escape rooms, and more!>

We are all so much more than our age, income, opinions, or shopping habits... right?  Certainly we can't be dropped into simple boxes like that and expect to have much in common with our box-mates...

But what if you change the "or" of my first sentence into an "and"?   

My middle-aged, middle-income, ethnically diverse, and environmentally conscious household-with-teens is probably more similar to other households that tick all of those boxes than it is to a random Canadian household. [...]

This argument is at the root of the concept of psychographic clusters...  

<Read on to learn about the power of Prizm5 & our SimplyAnalytics database!>

Another bit of welcome news from Statistics Canada this morning... they've published new data from the 2016 General Social Survey.  

Now, based solely on that one short phrase, you may not think it's worth reading further, but those who have used data from the General Social Survey know that its new cycle deals with "Canadians at Work and Home" and is deeply relevant to research areas in both economics and business.

<Read on to find out exactly how "deeply relevant" this data might be to your research!>

We've recently had to make the difficult decision to cancel our EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit) database subscription with very short notice. Usage of the EIU database had dramatically decreased in the last few years, resulting in an unsustainably high cost-per-use. Our access will cease at the end of 2017.

We would normally engage in a long period of consultation before making such a cancellation decision, but the renewal offer had a very short deadline and required a three-year commitment. We did not feel it would be prudent to lock ourselves into a multiyear contract for a resource that is so rarely used (only 65 downloads this year, compared to over 700 five years ago).

<Read on for details about remaining EIU content at SFU and alternative sources...>