The context
Membership organizations usually see only their member file, a partial and self-selected view of the market they serve. The question that matters is the whole profession: everyone licensed in the state, member or not.
The method
A full-population portrait built from public licensure data and governed by a strict privacy-containment model: a hard wall between public and internal data, aggregate-only reporting, and small-cell suppression so no individual is ever exposed. The result is a view of an entire state profession, its generations, its geography, and its membership penetration, built from data anyone could legally access and handled more carefully than required.
What it demonstrates
The method repeats in any state with an accessible licensure roster, which makes it a template for membership organizations that want to see their whole market rather than the slice that already joined. Privacy containment is built into the method itself, so the rigor doesn’t depend on anyone’s good intentions.