Using CDC Wonder to Obtain Vital Statistics

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Using CDC Wonder to Obtain Vital Statistics by
Mark J. Kittleson, Ph.D. Professor, Health
Education
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To get to CDC Wonder, type its URL http//wonder.
cdc.gov After you get there, click the
Anonymous User button
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We want to go to Get Info link.
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As you can see there are many data bases to
choose from. For this example, we are going to
look at mortality (deaths)
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This is the page that comes up once you click
Mortality. Scroll down to see all of the
various sections
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Lets start collecting data. For this example,
pull down The state menu and select Illinois.
Then pull down the Menu below to identify The
county (for this example Well choose Jackson
County)
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Also note that one can selectall or specific
races onecan select male, female orboth one
can evenselect the specific age.Finally here
one can selecta specific year or range ofyears.
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Also note that one canobtain age-adjusted
ratesagain, each menucan provide you with
theoptions.Finally, in section 3 you will note
that you can select the specific disease,as
identified by the ICD-9 codes. Since we are
only concerned with overall deaths (not
specific) we wont be using the ICD.
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Finally, one can tell how youwant the data to be
displayed. For this example, weve selected the
variables age and race,but one can also select
amongthe following State Gender Year
ICD9and County
When you haveselected every-thing, then
clickthe send button
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After clicking send, one of two things
will happen. First, if the server is busy
youllget a memo saying that theyll email you
thedata. Or, second, if the server is not
busyyou will get your actual data. The
examplebelow is what your data would look
likeif the system isnt too busy.
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This is the lowerhalf of the data
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CDC Wonder also gives you theopportunity to
receive the data in a varietyof formatsascii
(text only) html format or comma delimited.
The latter is greatif you want to embed into a
spreadsheet.Point and click to your choice (in
this case,comma delimited).
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Once you click the comma delimited linkyoull
get a small box on your screen asshown in the
upper left. It is asking youwhere on the
computer do you want tosave this file. By
default it will name it for you (of course you
can change that name). Note that it saves it as
aCVS format.
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Now, if you want the data in ASCII format,click
that link.
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This is what you get.To copy this data into a
file, pull down the Edit menu, highlight
Select All, and then Release the mouse button.
The entire text will now be highlighted in blue
(next screen)
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Once it is all blue, go back to the Editmenu,
pull it down, and click copy.Then go to your
favorite word processingsystem or spreadsheet,
open a new file,and click paste. Youll have to
parse thisdata if you do this in a
spreadsheet.How to parse can be found in the
Excel spreadsheet.
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If you wanted the data in .html format,click
that link.
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If you selected the .html format off the
pagewith the results, this is what you will
get.As with the ASCII, go to the Edit
menu, click Select All, then click copy. One
can then paste into their favorite word
processing system
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Thats how you get data from the CDC Wonder
System. Its quick, cheap, and easy to do. Make
sure that you look at all of the other data bases
available. We only looked at Mortality, but the
system has many other valuable databases. Once
you have completed this tutorial, and the Census
tutorial, you are ready to see how you can use
this data in a spreadsheet format. Go to the
first of the Excel Tutorials. click