Gathering Data From the Census Bureau

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Gathering Data From the Census Bureau

• A tutorial created by
• Mark J. Kittleson, Ph.D.
• Professor, Health Education

This project was sponsored by SIUs Teaching
Fellowship Program of 1998 and updated summer
2001.
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Census 1990

• The first part will review how to obtain data
  from the 1990 census. Afterwards you will be
  shown how to obtain data from the Year 2000
  census. Please note that at the time of this
  writing, not all states have their data available
  from the 2000 census.

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The URL is http//venus.census.gov/cdrom/lookup
The Census provides information in two databases.
The STF3A is a sample count (16) of all people
who completed the long survey. The STF1A is the
100 count (those who completed the short
version). Scroll down to see the rest of the
page.
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STF3A is a sample countapproximately 16 of the
population. These are the individuals
whocompleted the long form.STF1A is 100 of
thepopulation. This includes the84 who
completed the short form And the 16 who
completed the long form (which includedthe
short form questions)
For this tutorial, we are going to use the STF3A
data. Move your cursor over the STF3A link and
you will see a pointy finger appear. Click once
with the left button of the mouse.
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The next screen you will see will ask you two
things which state do you want to review and
what option within that state. The pointy finger
shows the optionssince we just want a county
well click the state--county circle.
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After clicking the state-county circle, scroll
down a little until you have full view of all of
the states. Scroll down to the state you want to
select. In our example, lets choose Illinois.
Put the cursor over Illinois and click once. It
should turn dark blue. Now, click submit.
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You will need to now select what county. First,
under the Choose your option if all you want is
the general population, keep the button as is.
If you want anything specific, click the
appropriate circle. For this example, we just
want the entire county.
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You will need to now select what county. In this
case, scroll down the Illinois listings of
counties and select Jackson County. Now click
Submit.
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By default, it will choose tables. Unless you
need to make some changes, click Submit once.
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Now you get to choose what specific data from
your county. There are hundreds of options. For
this sample, click P1--universal population
count. However, well scroll down for more
options.
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Besides P1 well be choosing the populations of
race by sex and by age. Please note that it is
divided by white, black, American Indiana, Asian
and other. Each of those are broken into male
and female. Click all of these (P14A to P14J).
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After choosing all of your variables, scroll back
to the top of the page and click the Submit
button.
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The next screen will ask in what format you want
the data presented. Stick with the HTML (its
the default). Then click Submit
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Viola, you got your data. If you scroll down
youll see a lot of information. If you recall,
P1 was a total population (61,067). The rest of
this page lists all of the different populations
by age, sex, and race. It is a hefty amount of
data.
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OK, enough of looking at the data. You need to
get to work. Ill show you how to copy this data
from this page onto a word processing file for
future work. First, point the cursor to the Edit
heading, click and hold the left mouse. Youll
see this menu. Drag down to Select All. Now
let go.
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After you let go, everything turns to blue. This
means that all of the data is highlighted. Now
you are ready to copy and paste to a word
processing system.
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As before, put your cursor on the Edit heading,
and with the left button held down, drag open the
menu. Keeping your finger on the left button,
drag down to the word Copy. This will copy
everything that is highlighted. Now let go.
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Once you have completed the copy mode, you will
need to go to your spread sheet. If you have
your spreadsheet (i.e., Excel), already running,
you can go to the bottom of the screen and click
that box. Youll then open up Excel (or any
other system you are using).
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Here is a typical spreadsheet (although this is
Excel, it is representative of mostspreadsheets.
In my Excel system I have a little helper in
the upper right hand corner.You can ignore this
dog throughout this tutorial.After you have
copied the data from the web,come into Excel,
pull down the Edit Menu,and then hit paste.
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Obtaining Year 2000 Data
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To obtain 2000 Data, first go to http//factfinde
r.census.gov/ Youll get this screen
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As you can see,there are numerous sec-tions
that onecan use to ob-tain data.
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By pulling down this menu, you can see all the
varioustypes of data available.
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Lets see how we can get age and sex datafirst,
highlightthis variable
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Then pull down the for menu andfor this
example, lets highlight county
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It now asks for whatstatepull down the menu
and highlight the state. For this example,we
are highlight Illinois
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Now, select acountyfor this examplewere
highlightingJackson countyThen click go
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This is the datayou getyoucan scroll downand
note theinfo
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To download the datapull down
Print/Downloadand highlight Download
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You will get this small boxI would recommend
using comma delimitedclick OK
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It will ask you where you would liketo save it.
Make sure you save itin a folder that you will
remember
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Now, open up your spreadsheet and open up the file
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Poof! The data nowappears with each numberin
its own cellnow you can do some analysis
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Another Way To Get 2000 Data
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Go back to http//factfinder.census.gov and then
clickthe Summary File 1link
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You will now come tothis page. You can see the
types of tables you can askforyou will
alsosee the states where the data is available
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For this example,highlight Age and Sexand
then click Illinois
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As with previousexampleone can downloadit as a
comma delimitedformat andput into ones
spreadsheet
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On this same page youcan get more detailby
clicking detailed tables
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First, identify the type of areastate, county,
census tract
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Highlight the state, then clickthe add
buttonnow click next
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Now selectyour subjectwe are
clickingsexthen hit search
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Now more informationcan be seenhighlight all
interested dataand click addFor this example
we are lookingat Sex by Age
Now click Show Table
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The data appearsone can click download andsave
it to your hard drive
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• The 2000 data makes it easy to incorporate into
  ones spreadsheet. The 1990 data take a little
  more work. If you have data from 1990 and need
  to make it work in a spreadsheet, continue on

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This is the data that youve copies from the
1990 data. Youll note that there is little you
cando with the numbers because the agesand the
actual population numbersare not in independent
cells.However, the next few screens showyou how
to parse that data sothat they have their
individual cells.
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First, delete the first seven rowsthey have no
real value to you.Do this by clicking onto the
number 1 row, and dragging Until all seven rows
are highlighted.Then pull down the Edit
Menuand click the delete panel.
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After those lines are removed, highlight column
A by clicking onto the panel below the A.You
will have the entire columnhighlighted.You
first want to remove all the periodswell do a
replace.Pull down the Edit Menu, and click
the Replace panel.
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Excel asks you to find what and to replace it
withwhat. Note that in the find what, a
period isentered. In the replace with row,
move the spacebar oncethis will replace all .
with a single space. Then hit replace all
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After clicking OK, this is what you will see.
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Now lets parse the data. First, Click the
column panel that Says A to highlight the
entire column. (Note thatthis image doesnt show
thatcolumn A is highlighted). Then pull down the
data menuand highlight the Text to Column
panel.
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After click text to column you will see this
box. Bydefault the box will show fixed width.
Dont changethis. Now click the next button.
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You will now get this box with the
followingconfiguration. Now click the finish
button.
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Your data has now been parsed so thatthe ages
and the actual populationsare now in their own
separate cells.Now you can do some analyses.
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After you have saved it, you can now put it into
an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to do further
analysis. Remember the name of this file, and
make sure that you save it on a floppy disk drive
(its referred to as drive a) Go onto the
next tutorial.