Agencies are entered into the sponsor code table using a convention that may not make immediate sense to end users.

Here are a few tips that will make your search successful.

1. If you do not find the agency you are looking for the first time you search, try searching again using a different search string. For example, if you are trying to find THE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF CHEST PHYSICIANS (INCL THE CHEST FOUNDATION) and you enter American College of Chest, you will not find the agency. Your next step should be to search again using the most unique word in the agency name. In this case it would be CHEST.

Find the most unique word in the name of the agency and search for that word alone. Do not enter in multiple words if possible. This will return all occurences of that word and is likely to pull the correct agency code. For example, if you are trying to find the sponsor code for The American Heart Association, the best word to type in the search field is Heart. Association will return far too many results and in many instances, Association is abbreviated as Assn.

2. Often times but not always, words like National, International, Association, Society, Foundation and others are abbreviated in the table. It is not usually a good idea to search with these words. But if you can't help it and believe it the best route to take (having not found the agency otherwise), here are the corresponding abbreviations:

National= Natl

International= Intl

Association= Assoc

Society= Soc

Foundation= Fdn