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Data for persona creation - where to get it?

 

 

Only with a solid data base as a foundation can you bring a persona to life and work with it.

The first port of call for companies is always their own internal databases: those of the current workforce, applicant databases, accounting data, internal interviews, web analytics, social analytics, surveys and more. Here you can find out details about product usage, satisfaction, reasons for purchase, motivation to work, willingness to change jobs, satisfaction with pay, working atmosphere and management, expectations and wishes regarding one's own career, and much more.
But: especially smaller companies often have little internal data material. And even in large companies, the internally available data is usually not sufficient to make a persona lifelike.

Here's where you can find free, publicly available data anywhere that can help with persona creation:

National public sources

In every country, there are publicly available demographic data. Statistical offices such as the Federal Statistical Office as an example for Germany, residents' registration offices and others collect "hard" data such as gender, age, education level, marital status, place and type of residence, income and more.
Public authorities and research institutions also conduct regular surveys and make the results available to the public free of charge. Examples of this in Europe are Eurostat or in Germany the Federal Statistical Office https://www.destatis.de/

When it comes to data for Candidate Personas, the employment agencies/employment offices provide data, in Germany the Federal Employment Agency: https://statistik.arbeitsagentur.de/

The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training provides all kinds of facts and figures on vocational training: https://www.bibb.de/de/index.php

Furthermore, there are other data sources with comprehensive data on specific topics, e.g., in Germany, the federal government's health reporting: https://www.gbe-bund.de/ Also on the topic of health, the Robert Koch Institute offers data and reports including on infectious diseases, health reporting and epidemiological data: https://www.rki.de/

Other sources as needed are

The Federal Agency for Civic Education also provides data and information on political and social issues in Germany: https://www.bpb.de/

The Deutsche Bundesbank provides statistical data on topics such as money, banks, financial markets and balance of payments: https://www.bundesbank.de/statistiken.

If you need something more detailed, you can use the regional database of the Federal Statistical Office. It offers extensive regional statistics for various area levels in Germany: https://www.regionalstatistik.de/

Many governments aggregate their publicly available data on so-called Open Data portals, which you can recognize a gov or similar in the URL. Examples include:

Europe

A quicker comparison can be made by accessing Europe-wide sources. One such source is Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Union. Eurostat collects, prepares and publishes statistical data at the European level: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/main/data

EuroHealthNet provides data and information on health and social determinants in Europe: https://eurohealthnet.eu/

European Social Survey is a comprehensive source of social data and opinion polls in various European countries: https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/

It is a Europe-wide project that takes place every two years and is conducted by an international consortium of research institutions. The survey collects data on topics such as political participation, social justice, health, trust in institutions and much more.

The European Data Portal provides access to a variety of public data sources from different European countries: https://www.europeandataportal.eu/de, while the European Union Open Data Portal provides access to data sources from EU institutions and agencies: https://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/home

Like the Bundesbank for Germany, the European Central Bank provides economic and financial data for the European Union: https://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/

Worldwide public sources

Not only countries collect data, prepare it and make it available, but also international organizations, first and foremost the UN and its sub-organizations. These are accordingly organized according to subject areas:

Data on the global situation of children (e.g. health, education, living conditions, child labor, number of children, nutrition) is provided by the UNICEF database: https://data.unicef.org/

The UN Organization for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women UN Women provides data on the global situation of women (e.g. health, education, marriage, number of children, income, rights): https://data.unwomen.org/

Anyone who needs global health data can get it free of charge from the World Health Organization (WHO): https://www.who.int/data/gho

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) provides comprehensive data on agriculture, food security and nutrition at http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/.

Data on the world of work, the labor market and employment around the world can be found at the International Labor Organization (ILO): https://ilostat.ilo.org/, while UNESCO providesdata on education, science and culture: http://data.uis.unesco.org/.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) provides data and statistics on refugees and displaced persons worldwide: https://www.unhcr.org/data.html

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNODC provides data and reports on drugs, crime and human trafficking. URL: https://dataunodc.un.org/

Reliable data concerning telecommunications and information technology are particularly important nowadays. This can be found at the International Telecommunication Union ITU: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/default.aspx

Complementary to the UN data, the World Bank maintains an extensive collection of data on various topics such as the economy, population, health, and education: https://data.worldbank.org/

UN Data offers UN data on one page with selection option by country/region and/or subject area: https://data.un.org/

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides data on the economy, education, the environment and other topics for its member and partner countries: https://data.oecd.org/

Social media

Social media offers freely accessible data in abundance. Using social media analytics tools, you can gain data and insights from your social media activities. Some of these tools are available for free, while others are paid and have advanced features.
Most social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and others, usually offer free internal analytics dashboards to their users. This allows you to see data about your own posts, your audience, reach, interactions, and more.

Other free tools include basic versions of Hootsuite, Buffer, or Social Mention. With these tools, you can track basic metrics like follower growth, engagement rates, top posts, etc.

Some social media platforms also provide access to their APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), which allow developers to create custom analytics tools. If you have developers on your team or want to hire some, you can use API data to perform specific analytics.

HR and recruiting data for Candidate Personas

For Candidate Personas, data related to recruitment and HR management is particularly relevant. You can find these at other sources besides the one already mentioned:

The Indeed Hiring Lab is the research division of the Indeed job board. It regularly publishes reports and analyses on labor market and job search trends: https://www.hiringlab.org/

LinkedIn offers a Talent Insights section that provides data and analysis on the labor situation, demand and supply of professionals and professional profiles: https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/talent-insights A similar offering is available in the Business section of Xing.

Glassdoor, a job board with employer ratings, regularly provides business research reports and analysis on topics such as the job market, job satisfaction and salaries: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/

Stack Overflow Conducts an annual survey of developers that provides insights into technology, skills, and trends in the IT job market: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey

Salary.com provides information and data on salaries and compensation trends in various professions and industries: https://www.gehalt.de/

Graduate studies by universities and research institutions often offer insights into the career entry and career paths of graduates.

Other

The Google Public Data Explorer platform provides access to and visualization of a variety of publicly available data sources: https://www.google.com/publicdata/directory

Google Scholar focuses on search results from scientific literature and academic resources. You can search there for scientific articles, studies, conference papers, theses, books, and other academic publications, although some of them are chargeable.

The Global Open Data Index is an initiative of Open Knowledge International, a nonprofit organization that promotes open data and transparency in government institutions and other organizations worldwide. It provides a comprehensive overview of public data sources worldwide: https://index.okfn.org/

These many data sources are just a few of the most common free examples of where you can get data for your personas. In addition, there are others and, of course, a variety of paid offerings from market research institutes and other commercial providers.

At Persona Institute, we have already done the work of sifting, analyzing, and preparing, and we continue to do so. As a result, we have a constantly updating database of well over 1.5 million records from which we can draw to bring to life a detailed, data-driven and lifelike persona for any purpose in a matter of days.

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