Hawaii’s Indicator-Based Information System (Hawaii- IBIS) Tutorial How to Build Your Own Reports

Click on this link to go straight to the BRFSS query page and select your health indicator.

OR, the “Build a Report” button on the Hawaii- IBIS home page takes you to the query menu.

Select the dataset you want to query. Note: right now Hawaii-IBIS only has a subset of data from BRFSS. More data coming soon!

Health indicators are sorted into categories. Click the blue bar of the category you are interested in.

For example, the Access to Health Care category has three indicators.

There are help buttons on this page.

If you mouse- over the blue question mark in the bubble, you’ll get some brief pop-up help text, describing the indicator.

Once you select an indicator, there will usually be two versions of that indicator – crude rate and age- adjusted rate. In this example we clicked on the HC Access – have coverage indicator.

The question-mark help buttons here will explain the difference between crude rate and age-adjusted rate.

This example shows the definition of crude rate.

Click on the indicator you wish to query. In this example we selected the Crude Rate for HC Access – have coverage.

A default report will appear, showing the results aggregated for all available years, grouped by county. (Later in this tutorial you will learn how to modify the report.) Your selections and filters are documented at the top of the results page, under Query Criteria. Below that, a chart is displayed. Scroll down to view a data table and a map.

The Data Table provides percentages, confidence intervals, counts, and population estimates by county. A color coded map is also provided, but it is only available by county. If you modify your query (see below) and select different geographies, or if you display the data by more than one dimension (e.g., age, sex, race) the map will not be available. Scroll down for more information about the results of your query.

Meta data (information about the data) are provided at the bottom of the results page. There are Data Notes, Data Issues, Data Sources and the Time Stamp for when you ran the query.

You can modify this report by clicking on the Modify Query Definition button in the left side navigation panel. This will take you to a page where you can modify the query or change how you want to display the results.

The first time you go to the Query Builder page to modify a query, you will see this pop-up. This is to remind you of the data use requirements. Click on the I Agree button, and you will continue to the query page.

There are 6 optional steps to modify your query and the 7 th step allows you to modify how you display the results. You can use one, some, or all of the steps. In each step you can filter the data by selecting only certain values. Or you can change what will be displayed in the report. Simply click on a blue bar to expand a step.

In Step 1, you can select which indicator response to report. The default is the Yes response.

In step 2 you can filter on the years you want to include in your report. The default report includes all available years. You can select one or more years, from the list of available years. Note that the IBIS system has data loaded for 2011 forward. Also, some indicators do not have data for all years: the survey question may not have been asked in all years.

In step 3 you can select the geographic area you wish to display the data by. The default is county. You can also filter the data, by selecting one or more values inside the box of the selected geography.

In this example, Island has been selected as the geographic area. A filter has also been applied, so that only data for Lanai, Maui, and Molokai will be included in the resulting report.

In step 4 you can select one of several age groups to display the data by. The default is the “7 Age Groups”. Note that the data will only be displayed by age group if you select age group in the display options (step 7). You can also filter the data, to include only a subset of the age groups.

In step 5 you can filter the data by selecting only males or only females. The default is to include both males and females.

In step 6 there are several other demographic characteristics you can view the data by, or filter on. If you want to filter on one of these, click on the box and a drop down box will appear with all of the possible values for that category. Note that although there are no limits on the number of selection criteria, too many filters may result in no data being returned on the results page, or most of the data being suppressed.

In this example we are going to filter on the DOH Race/Ethnicity category. Simply check the boxes beside the values you want to include in the report.

Finally, in step 7 you can change how the results are displayed in the report. You can select up to two categories to display or group the data by. The default report only displays the data grouped by geography, where the default geography is county.

In this example we are going to display the data by year. You can see that there are a lot of options!

Since we filtered this query on both Island (Lanai, Maui, Molokai) and DOH Race/Ethnicity (view here), we might want to display one or both of these categories in the resulting report. Since we have already chosen to display the data by year, we can select one more category to group the data by.

So, let’s go ahead and group the data by DOH Race/Ethnicity.

So, now we have modified the query and applied some filters. We’ve also changed how we want the report displayed. The last step is to click on the Submit button!

Once you hit the Submit button the results page appears. Note that a box will appear letting you know that Hawaii-IBIS is processing the query. The results should appear within a few seconds.

Your modified report will appear after a few seconds. You will see your modifications reflected in the Query Criteria section. We have filtered on Island and Race/Ethnicity (DOH). We have grouped the data by Year and Race/Ethnicity.

In the chart and the data table you will see missing, or suppressed values (**). This is because, once you start applying filters to your query, sometimes the resulting filtered data set is too small, or is considered statistically unstable. Consider aggregating years of data, or reducing the number of filters.

You have the option of exporting this report to excel. Just click on the Export button in the left navigation area. Note that charts and maps do not get exported, only the data table and documentation. However, you can build your own custom chart in excel.

If you decide you want to look at a different indicator and build a new report, just click on the Select Different Indicator button in the left navigation panel. This will take you back to the Health Indicator Selection page, where you can select a new indicator and build a new report.

Select another health indicator and build a new report.

I hope this tutorial has helped you find the data you want and build the report you need. If you have any questions or need help, please do not hesitate to contact us.

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