The CDW IT Monitor was created by CDW, and research and analysis is conducted by independent polling firm Richard Day Research of Evanston, Ill. 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 1,054 IT decision makers conducted between May 26 and June 3, 2011.

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 continue to yield comparisons to previous scores, allowing for an interpretation of the direction of sentiment in the IT marketplace.

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 at the 95% confidence level 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.