Birth certificate data (U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth). This database is an administrative record of all births, as mandated by state and federal law. It includes information certifying the circumstances of the birth, and registers the child for administrative purposes (taxes and social security). Using form: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/birth11-03final-ACC.pdf
Strong research question: Is prenatal care associated with pre-term birth or low birth weight?
These data elements are both collected on birth certificates, and not likely to be misclassified. A mother would report whether or not she had received pre-natal care, and pre-term birth and low birth weight can be recorded pretty accurately by a health care professional (whose position is also recorded). Furthermore, since prenatal care and birth weight/weeks are likely to be associated, further covariates such race and education level can be adjusted from data collected on the birth certificate.
Weak research question: How does psychosocial stress contribute to pre-term birth or low birth weight?
Same outcome, but it is very unlikely to get a reliable measure of psychosocial stress from a mother soon after she has given birth from data collected on a birth certificate. There are data elements for whether or not a mother is married, principal source of payment for this delivery, previous preterm birth, which could be weak proxies for psychosocial stress. We can change the research question to better align with these data elements, or we could conduct a case-control study looking at maternal stress and depression during pregnancy.
Google trends. A database that shows how often a particular search term is entered relative to the total search-volume globally, and in various languages. Data is available starting in 2004, and while some terms translate into other languages automatically (like ‘flower’ and ‘fleur’), others do not.
Strong research question: How did the announcement of the HPV vaccine increase awareness of the vaccine?
Strengths. Good for general awareness and popular trends, such as media coverage about the HPV vaccine, and associated terms. Because of the widespread use of Google, Trends is a good measure of popular interest and news.
Weaker research question: How did the announcement of the HPV vaccine increase vaccination rates of the vaccine?
Searching for information about the HPV vaccine would need to be highly correlated with seeking the vaccine from a provider. This question could not be answered alone from Google Trends. We could use medical insurance databases to see how many more women got the vaccine after the public announcement it was available in a natural experiment/regression discontinuity design.
Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. MEPS is a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the United States starting in 1994.
Strong research question: How often do Americans seek preventive care services?
This research question is particularly well-suited for MEPS; data is collected on what health services Americans are using, how frequently they use them, the cost of these services, how these services are paid for, and the cost, scope, and breadth of health insurance held by and available to U.S. workers.
Weak research question: What is the incidence of cardiovascular disease?
MEPS seeks to enumerate medical expenditures from households, medical providers, and employers, and therefore records are aligned to reflect costs, not necessarily diagnoses. Depending on how correlated cardiovascular disease is with seeing a cardiologist, the Medical Provider Visits (MV) Section to households does ask specialty of seen medical providers. Therefore, we could look at the cost per household for cardiovascular-related health conditions, which may be more interesting.