Maybe it's just because it's lunchtime and I'm hungry... 

but when I scanned a word cloud of the titles from all the reports downloaded in our Statista database last month, there seemed to be a strong trend toward research about foods & beverages: lunch, candy, milk, drink, restaurant, consumption, cutlery, cocoa... 

< click for more (unless you're too hungry)... >

There's absolutely no arguing that much work is still required for equality, safety, and success of women in the workplace.

Issues such as glass ceilings, sex discrimination in employment, sexual harassment of women, and pay equity are all still far from resolved in most countries, Canada included.

However, in celebration of International Women's Day, I thought I'd highlight some of the positive stories and practical guidance about (and from) women entrepreneurs, leaders, and employees... 

<Read on for lots of great ebooks, books, and more!>

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!>

I'm very pleased to report that we've added several industry almanacs to our Plunkett Research Online collection:

Aerospace, Satellite, Aircraft & Drones Industry Almanac 2018
Airliners, Aircraft Manufacturing, OEM, Avionics, Electronics, Rockets, Satellites, Drones...
 

Biotechnology, Drugs & Genetics ...

<Read on for the full list of new titles from Plunkett!>

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!>

In addition to cheese, the other major primary research topic for BUS 345 this term is J.Crew (clothing retail).  

If you're in that class (or if you just have a burning desire to learn about our market research resources and want to use this as an excuse/example to explore them), see below for some...

<Read on for more!>

I understand that our BUS 345 students might be doing primary market research on cheese this term.  If you're in that class¹, see below for some initial thoughts on resources to help you understand the cheese market and consumers, especially in Canada.  

<Read on for lots of cheese research tips!>

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!>