Making the list

Almost anything can be ranked, and various groups bestow many upon this region.

Northwest Arkansas is one of nine great U.S. areas for tech startups and 19th on a list of the 20 Most Secure U.S. Places to Live.

The University of Arkansas is 69th on the list of top public colleges and universities.

Bentonville is listed as one of "5 Up-and-Coming U.S. Tourism Cities" and the 21c Museum Hotel is the No. 7 hotel in the country.

Do any of them matter? That depends.

"Rankings, done right, are a useful source of information for consumers," said Brian Kelly, editor and chief content officer for U.S. News & World Report. "Their credibility depends on who's doing them, for what reason, how carefully the methodology is constructed and whether the data is available and accurate."

Mike Harvey, chief operating officer of the Northwest Arkansas Council, said the attention is good.

"In a general sense, rankings are important," he said. "It's about creating a positive impression. It's not that we have a bad impression, but we have no impression."

Ted Abernathy, managing partner of Economic Leadership and a consultant on a couple of regional plans, agreed rankings can help brand the area and spread the word about opportunities in Northwest Arkansas. Being home to headquarters of corporate leaders such as Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods helps put the region on the map, he said.

"The good news is your brand is good, it's just not that well-known," Abernathy said.

Types of rankings

Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, said one gauge of how much a ranking matters is how it's being used. She said uses range from policymaking to advertising.

Deck said public policy decisions may not directly tie to a specific ranking, but rankings can influence decision makers. She pointed to the creation of the 37-mile Northwest Arkansas Razorback Greenway as an example. The area has ranked low in physical activity several times, and the nearly completed trail could boost that mark.

The Walton Family Foundation is a major donor for the trail, and Kevin Thornton, the foundation senior communications officer, said a 2012 quality of life survey noted interest in the project.

"We didn't rank items, but many people pointed to the trails," he said. "That served to validate our investment in the trail system."

Economic or job creation rankings, where the area tends to score high, could point to areas of improvement, Harvey said. The council set workforce development as a goal to help meet employer needs after several rankings noted it as a weakness.

Other rankings have the lone purpose of making a person, an area or entity feel good about itself, Deck said.

"People recognize there is value in being recognized," she said.

Cary Arsaga, owner of Arsaga's Coffee Roasters, agreed it's nice to be singled out for doing something you love, but it just doesn't mean as much as it used to. He said his business has been named best coffee, or runner up, by some entity nearly every year since he opened in 1993.

"There are so many rankings these days. I don't know at what point it becomes meaningless," Arsaga said.

Arsaga said he used to hang the awards in his shops, but people coming in already know about his coffee, so they're displayed now in his office. He does use the honor when selling coffee in other retail outlets.

"It helps with consumers who haven't used us in the past," he said.

Different information

Deck said as an economist she has a proclivity for data-driven rankings.

"I tend to think the simpler the ranking is to understand, the better," she said.

The Milken Institute relies on data to complete its rankings. The independent economic research organization has done research and rankings for years, including the Best Cities for Successful Aging report.

"We want to turn ideas into action," said Anu Chatterjee, author of the Aging report. "We are not creating information, but bringing the data together and putting it out in front of people."

She said many rankings and surveys centered on the country's aging population just look at the retirement aspect. She said her biennial report includes a variety of subjects, including health care and wellness opportunities, transportation, community engagement and employment opportunities.

The 2014 report used 84 data points to rank the country's 379 metropolitan areas in two groups.

Northwest Arkansas ranked No. 116 for small metros. Within that ranking there are eight main points, and the area reached as high as 53rd for employment and education and as low as 200 for health care.

The website Liveability.com uses both data and subjective information in its ranking. The company publishes monthly and annual lists of cities, said Matt Carmichael, editor of Livability.com.

Subjective data is information from a person's point of view and includes feelings, perception and concerns obtained through interviews and surveys. He said the site explores what makes small- to medium-sized cities great places to live. The company started in 2010.

Some lists, such as "best downtowns," need to go beyond straight data, Carmichael said.

"For something like that we would look at vacancy rate, daytime-nighttime population shifts, construction," he said.

Survey growth

Laura Jacobs, associate vice chancellor of university relations at the University of Arkansas, said rankings can be important if performed by a trusted source.

"There are so many different rankings. It seems like a new one comes out every day and some are more reputable than others," she said. "We ask ourselves, 'Are there groups that would find this ranking influential?'"

Rankings can influence current and prospective students, parents, faculty, alumni and benefactors, she said.

"Sometimes the ranking may be all someone knows about an institution," she said.

U.S. News & World Report creates its list of best colleges and universities by compiling a lot of data, much from annual questionnaires it sends to all accredited four-year institutions.

"U.S. News & World Report rankings are designed to help consumers sift through lots of complicated information to narrow their choices when making life decisions," Kelly said.

The organizations compiling lists and rankings recognize there's a lot of competition in the business.

Bert Sperling is celebrating 30 years of analyzing data and creating lists. He developed a software program named Places, U.S.A. in 1985 that allowed people to enter personal preferences to find the best place for them. The website BestPlaces.net now attracts more than 1.5 million visitors a month, he said.

USAA Military Home, Life & Auto Insurance commissioned Sperling to create the list of best places for veterans to find jobs.

"I feel I have some responsibility in the growth of rankings," he said. "We can't battle other places by volume. It takes us longer to do a study than the people who just sit down on their computer and do a quick Top 10 list."

BestPlaces creates about one new list a month and uses data from what Sperling calls reputable sources to rank areas on a variety of topics ranging from Best Baseball Cities to Most Stressful Cities. He said the government provides a lot of useful data, and he tries to avoid using subjective data.

"But sometimes subjective information can lead to opinions on how people act and what they do," Sperling said. "It can be useful information to use."

Peer groups

Minoli Ratnatunga is one of the authors of the Best Performing Cities report. She said the idea behind the ranking is to provide community leaders and policy makers a chance to evaluate their cities against peers.

This is the 15th year for the report, which started as a project for Forbes. Milken now does the study internally. The report ranks the largest 200 U.S. metropolitan areas on how well they are creating and sustaining jobs and economic growth.

"We work with metropolitan statistical areas because that is where we can get consistent data from across the country from a trusted source," Ratnatunga said.

Northwest Arkansas ranked 49th in large cities in the 2014 report, up from 57th in the 2013 index.

Ratnatunga said both five- and one-year wage growth improved while the area didn't rank high in some of the high-tech metrics the group uses.

"This is partly so you can understand how you are performing against peer cities," she said. "It also shows how successful you've been, but not why."

The Northwest Arkansas Council uses various rankings to judge the area against what it has established as peer cities. The council gauges some aspects of the area's economy, including workforce and salary growth, by comparing it to Tulsa, Okla.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Huntsville, Ala.; Omaha, Neb.; and Kansas City, Mo.

Abernathy said it's good to compare the area to larger, high-performing regions.

Harvey said a lot of site selectors say rankings don't matter because they are so project driven. Site selectors are specialists hired to guide or influence decisions when a company is looking to open a facility in a new location.

"But in the general sense, rankings are important," Harvey said. "It's about creating a positive impression."

Christie Swanson can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWAChristie.

A Section on 03/29/2015