The CDW IT Monitor was created by CDW, and research and analysis is conducted by independent polling firm Richard Day Research of Evanston, Ill. At the center of the CDW IT Monitor is the Six Month Growth Outlook, an index number, which registered an initial benchmark reading of 63 in December 2007. Results are calculated on a scale of 0-100, with 100 indicating the highest level of confidence. Future readings of the CDW IT Monitor will continue to yield comparisons to previous scores, allowing for an interpretation of the direction of sentiment in the IT marketplace.

Decision-makers are invited from two large national panels of IT decision-makers built and maintained by Research Now and Survey Sampling International. Data reported in this release are based on a survey of 1,068 IT decision-makers conducted between April 3 and April 10, 2012. Sampling is designed to reflect a broad spectrum of IT decision-makers among all sizes of companies, multiple industries, and across three levels of government. For the purposes of the CDW IT Monitor, company sizes are defined as: small (10-99 employees), medium (100-999 employees) and large (1,000 or more employees).

Data are weighted to ensure that CDW IT Monitor calculations closely represent the overall population of corporate and government employers in terms of size, based on the number of employees. Corporate data are weighted according to U.S. Economic Census data, and government data are weighted according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual survey of government employment. The margin of sampling error for a survey based on this many interviews is approximately +/- 3 percentage points overall, +/-4 percentage points for the business sector, and +/-6 percentage points for government.