Steps and Strokes. Please go to the Census Bureau home page:

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Garey Sullivan
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1 An Example of Using American Community Survey Data and the Downloading of Data from the Census Bureau s Website to Determine the Significance of Economic Change in Several States, Several Metropolitan Area or all the Metropolises in a State Updated: October 23, 2009 Prepared by: Ren Farley (renf@umich.edu) Census Data Boot Camp for Journalists Population Studies Center, University of Michigan October 28 to 30, 2009 We demonstrated how to determine if there were a significant change from one year to the next in unemployment, household income and poverty in one state or one metropolitan area using tabular data shown on the American Factfinder website. Quite often you may be interested in all states, all metropolises or all metropolitan areas or cities in one state. You could do this laboriously by looking at data for each state or each metropolis using the procedures described. If you are only interested in a small number of states of metropolises, that might be the best strategy. However, if you are interested in all states or all metropolises or all the metropolises or places in a state that has many such as California, Ohio or Texas, you may want to download data into an Excel file. This is a description of that procedure. Steps and Strokes Please go to the Census Bureau home page: Please left click on the hypertext for American Factfinder shown in the left column on the Census Bureau home page Please left click on the hypertext for American Community Survey Get Data On the next page, please left click on the hypertext for Download Center toward the upper right corner. This means you are preparing to download data from the Census Bureau website to your own laptop or computer system. There is no charge and this will not damage or contaminate your laptop. Next you will see a page with many data options. You could download tabular information from any of the censuses or surveys listed in that array Please left click on the hypertext for: 2008 American Community Survey 1 Year Estimates. This is toward the middle of the page.

2 If you are interested in data for all states, on the next page, please highlight All States. We encourage you to work your first example with all states since the number of rows in the resulting download will be reasonable. However, you can also download data for: All counties of 100,000 or more All places (cities and Census Designated Places) of 100,000 or more All metropolitan statistical areas and all micropolitan statistical areas of 100,000 or more All congressional districts Note: There is a file of three year pooled ACS data for 2005 to 2007 and there will soon be one for ACS data for 2006 to You might download data from the three year pooled files for places of population size 65,000 and greater. * At this point you need to tell the Census Bureau website what type of data tables you wish to download. You can select one of the following: Detailed tables Data profiles Subject tables Comparison profiles These are the only tables that provide information about the significance of year to year changes. Please use your cursor to place the green bullet in the bullet hole for Comparison profiles tables. Please move your cursor to Go and left click. The next page will ask you whish files you wish to download. In this example we are interested in economic change. Please highlight the Selected Economic Characteristics: 2008 option. Next, on this page, please left click on the Add button Next, on this page, please left click on the Next button When the next page appears on your screen, please left click on Start Download At this point, you will be downloading data files from the Census Bureau s computers to your laptop or computer. After a few seconds, you should see a box on your screen posing the questions: Please be patient. It may take a few more seconds than you expect.

3 You will be asked: What would Foxfire do with this file? The first option is: Open with WinZip (default) Please left click on OK. Next you will see a screen on your laptop with a listing of several files including three that you have just downloaded. These are data files showing the economic characteristics of every state as estimated by the American Community Survey in 2007 and They are show whether there was any significant change in each data item between 2007 and 2008 and between 2006 and These files are labeled on your screen as; dc_acs_2008_1yr_goo_data1.txt dc_acs_2008_1yr_goo_data2.txt dc_acs_2008_1yr_goo_data3.txt Let s begin with the first of these three files. Note: Each of these of these three files provides information about the economic status of a state, metropolis or place. There are many, many data. Indeed, the Census Bureau presents 549 data items presenting information about the economic status of every geographic unit. To create more manageable files, the Census Bureau split the complete data array into parts. However, you may not know which component contains the data items of greatest interest to you until you look at each part. You will quickly learn which component is of most interest to you. Please left click on dc_acs_2008_1yr_goo_data1.txt. This should bring up a box on your screen that will allow you to save this file. Please save this file on your laptop. You may or may not wish to change its name. Please do not change the suffix:.txt. Please remember where you save this file. Please now open Microsoft Excel on your laptop. * Once you have opened Microsoft Excel on your monitor, please left click on File button at the top left hand corner. Then please click on Open Please go to the location and folder where you stored the text (.txt) file that you just downloaded from the Census Bureau s Data Center.

4 You may need to make sure that all files in the folder where you saved your downloaded file are displayed, not just the Microsoft Word files that may be in that folder. Your saved file from the Census Bureau is a.txt file. Left click on the name of that file. You will then be given a series of options. This involve changing the pipe delimited zipped.txt file that the Census Bureau generously put on your machine into a Excel file that is much easier to read, interpret and manipulate. A series of three Text Import Wizard boxes will appear on your screen pertinent to the file you just downloaded. This will allow you to translate the Census Bureau s.txt into a user-friendly Excel file. On the Step 1 of 3 Text Import Wizard screen, please make sure that there is a green bullet in the bullet hole for Delimited. On the Step 2 of 3 Text Import Wizard screen, please use your cursor to remove the green check mark that is automatically inserted into the box near tab. On the Step 2 of 3 Text Import Wizard screen, please use your cursor to put a green check near the Other box. Next, please insert a pipe into the Other box to tell the Wizard that these Census Bureau data are delimited by a pipe ( ). The pipe is the upper case character on your backslash key. Next, Step 3 of 3 Text Import Wizard will appear on you screen. Please use your cursor to put a green bullet in the hole next to text. * Next, please left click on Finish on this Step 3 of 3 page. You now have an Excel file showing 2008 ACS data for every state and the District of Columbia. You will immediately see a problem in reading the column heading. You can improve the presentation. In Excel, please highlight the row that shows the column heading text. Next left click on the format option toward the top of your page. Next left click on the cells option

5 Next left click on the alignment button at the top of the small screen Next, move your cursor to the empty and small text box next to Wrap text Next left click on OK toward the right bottom. At this point you will probably wish to save this Excel file using an.xls suffix to indicate it is an Excel file. Findings: You will find, I believe, that the unemployment rate rose significantly between 2007 and 2008 in 11 states. In 9 states, it decreased significantly. With regard to mean household incomes, there were significant decreases between 2007 and 2008 in 5 states and significant increases in an identical number of states. For mean household income, there were statistically significant declines in eight states and rises in four. A Geographic Note This example downloaded data about the significance of year to year economic changes in states. If you wished, you could have downloaded similar data for metropolitan areas, for counties or for cities, that is, for places. However, geographic units had to have a minimum population size of 65,000 to be included in this Census Bureau data array.

Using American FactFinder

Using American FactFinder John DeWitt Lisa Neidert Project Manager Data Services Social Science Data Analysis Network Population Studies Center What is American FactFinder? http://factfinder.census.gov