Thread by @rachelwalexande

Local reporters - I'm gonna do a quick thread of how you can do a story like this without a data team or the mapping chops of some bigger news orgs.

This is likely not the Fastest or Best way, but it is a way that works.

https://twitter.com/rachelwalexande/status/1072911892715266049

You're working with American Community Survey data. The ACS uses 5-year estimates for areas with smaller populations, including Census tracts (roughly akin to neighborhoods)

The 2017 data came out last week. Overview: census.gov/programs-surve…
Census 101: censusreporter.org/glossary/

The basic method for any Census story is 1) figure out which tables have the data you need & 2) figure out what area you want to talk about.

This involves a lot of false starts & looking at stuff that may not be super interesting until I find something good.

To actually get data, you use American Fact Finder, the Census web tool for downloading data. (If you know how APIs work, cool, do that.)

Link for specifically the latest ACS 2017 release is here: factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/…

Okay, so you want to look at neighborhoods in your area. Use those cool menus on the left, go to Geographies and hit "census tracts" (screenshot below)

It will ask you for a state, then a county. You can add a specific tract or all tracts in that county.

For this story, I did all tracts within Marion and Polk county. Later filtered out the rural counties/counties not part of Salem (I'll get there).

Next, you want to add the data tables you need. Two ways to do this.

1) Use the "topics" menu on the left of fact finder to filter down. For this one, I went topics --> housing --> financial characteristics --> gross rent. That gave me a list of 17 tables. The main data I used is table B25071, median gross rent as a % of household income.

2) Use @CensusReporter to find a table. This is helpful if you have no idea where to start or are confused about the weird ways the Census defines some stuff.

From the homepage, you can click on topics to learn more and get a list of common tables.

censusreporter.org

Once you know what tables you want in FactFinder, check them off with the checkbox. The menu up top should say "x selected" and give you an option to view or download tables.

From there, you can download your data for 2017. It will also have options to look back at prior years.

Bad news: every table/year combo is its own csv. So this is not the best way to do bulk data. But in a pinch, for a team of 1, it works.

Once you have your data, it'll be a list of names that make no sense, like "Marion County Census Tract 5.01" with a median rent or household income value.

How do you figure out which tract is where?

You can download a reference map here: census.gov/geo/maps-data/…

OR

Cheat and use Census Reporter again.

1) Pick a topic. Any topic.
2) Go to a table related to that topic.
3) Enter the county you're looking at for "place"
4) In the left menu, click "split Salem, OR into Census tracts"

This gives you a table. You want a map! So click "map" on the top right (right of the title). And voila, you get a map showing the Census tracts for that area.

Now you can zoom in, hover over & see the tract names. Which is how tract numbers become rough area descriptions.

Two caveats:

1) don't ignore the margin of error column in your Census data. If that figure is large (10% or more of the value being measured), that's a sign that the value itself is maybe iffy.

2) Make sure you know what a Census table is supposed to measure & units it's using

this is a very broad overview that will prob work if you've used factfinder a bit before & have some basic knowledge of census stuff, but if I can help, hit me up

should also add:

the amount of stuff the Census collects data on is truly wild and you could have a full-time reporter mostly find stories there (like @genebalk, who is an expert there)

shortlist people often don't think of: commute time, health coverage, natl origin

and what it doesn't do or doesn't do well -

religion (Pew usually best source IMO)

moving (they have data but the IRS data on this is usually better)

unemployment and labor stuff - BLS is often a better first stop, but depends on what you're doing

okay since a lot of y'all are here, some other tables I think are interesting that I didn't get into

B08308 travel time to work
B17005 poverty status by employment
B19013 median household income
B09020 senior citizen living arrangements
B16007 language spoken at home