Those who serve the needs of the older population must search constantly for better ways to help their clients and customers, in part because there are few specialized tools available. And as the older population increases in size and diversity, effectively supplying products and services becomes an ever-greater challenge. Government, non-profit, and charitable organizations share this problem with commercial providers, who face similar targeting and distribution issues. To help those who target older Americans, Decision Demographics proposes to develop a standardized geodemographic method to classify the over-60 population into specific social and economic groups. No currently existing geodemographic classification system provides data on older populations in all U.S. neighborhoods, or offers a wide variety of group types. Decision Demographics' PrimeSeg will fill this gap. Rather than identifying dominant characteristics for the total population, this census tract-based system will classify neighborhoods on the social, economic, demographic, and disability characteristics of only the older population. This new classification system promises to be a quick and powerful research tool for organizations that serve people aged 60 and over. Using only client or customer address information, PrimeSeg can link existing data with its specialized classification scheme to quickly produce a profile of current clients or a list of areas for potential expansion. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: Decision Demographics has already identified many commercial users of existing geodemographic systems who exclusively serve the older population and have stated a need for a specialized classification system. Besides these assisted living and continuing care industry users, potential clients include survey researchers, market researchers, product and service providers, and others in government, social services, package goods, housing, financial services, home-based services, and any other industry that serves an older clientele.
Thesaurus Terms: classification, community, computer system design /evaluation, data management, geographic site, human population distribution, human population study human old age (65+), informatics, information system, person with disability, social service human data
