Coming soon from the roper center!

The Roper Center recently announced it will begin to use an online analysis system called SDA (also used by IPUMS and ICPSR). This system allows users to conduct secondary analysis on about 1,500 surveys without having SPSS, SAS, or STATA. The system will be launched soon. Check The Roper Center for more information.

The future is an amazing place!

Get Census 2010 data under your holiday tree

So much data, so little time... Next week on December 21 we will have our first peek at Census 2010 data. While you won't be able to access the data through American FactFinder until February 2011, on December 21 the Census Bureau will release the state population totals for House of Rep apportionment. Did NC lose? Will Utah win? Be the first to know!

You can also view apportionment data through the past century using the widget below. Census 2010 data will be added on December 21.

OMG! Can't wait! It's like Christmas!

all our little monsters...

The American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates are now available from American FactFinder. For the first time, you can discover ACS data at the tract and census block level. Amazing!

Here is the census tract for UNCG. You can see all of our little monsters....

More ACS headed your way...

More information about the ACS 5-year estimates being released on Tuesday from the ACS website:

The 2005-2009 ACS 5-year estimates include estimates on most (but not all) topics included in the survey. Several topics that were added or modified in 2008 and 2009 are not included in these 5-year estimates. These include Bachelor's field of degree, disability, marital history, health insurance coverage, and service-connected disability status and ratings. The first 5-year estimates for these topics will be available in the 2013 release of the 2008-2012 5-year estimates (except for Bachelor's field of degree, which will be available in the 2014 release of the 2009-2013 estimates). For a complete list of topics covered on the ACS questionnaire, browse Subjects included in the American Community Survey.

For the advanced dataland geeks, you can even compare tables between the 2005-2009 ACS 5-year estimates and Census 2000 SF3! Geek-a-rama!

New ACS data coming to a tract near you!

At 9am on December 14th, the Census Bureau will release its American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. You will be able to use ACS data for geographies with fewer than 20,000 people (like tracts, block groups, and blocks). More info on the American Community Survey website.

We here in dataland can't wait and will have champagne corks at the ready! See you next week on American FactFinder!

Yummy data just for you! ACS 2009 1-year estimate

The U.S Census Bureau is pleased to announce the release of the 2009 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates on American FactFinder. There you will find tables with social, demographic, housing, and economic data for areas with populations of 65,000 or more.

You can access the newly-released data on American FactFinder at:2009 ACS 1-year data

If you would like more information and supporting documentation for this data release please visit the ACS web site at:www.census.gov/acs

New data from the Current Population Survey

Message from the State Data Center:

The Current Population Survey (CPS) will release data on poverty, median household income, and health insurance coverage on Thursday, September 16, at 10am. Visit the US Census Bureau home page at http://www.census.gov and look for an icon in the upper left corner of the page. You will be able to access the data and media kit to go with the data.

CPS is a small sample survey that produces annual data for state comparisons. This is NOT the American Community Survey (ACS) release. The ACS income and poverty release is scheduled for September 28 and will include data for sub-state areas with populations over 65,000. Additional ACS data for areas with populations below 65,000 will follow later this year.

OECD iLibrary: Not your daddy's OECD

The OECD is an intergovernmental organization devoted to enhancing economic cooperation and the promotion of democracy created in 1961 out of the Marshall plan. A list of OECD member countries is available here. Accession candidate countries are ones that want to be members of the OECD. Enhanced engagement countries are ones that haven't joined but are key players. Brazil and South Africa may become candidates for accession. The organization publishes a huge amount of research and data available to UNCG researchers and students through OECD ilibrary. We have had SourceOECD, but this new product is ten times better.

Here are some highlights of the new product:

• On the main page of the OECD ilibrary, you can look up information by theme or country. This includes themes like Education and Health that people may not associate with the OECD.
• iLibrary includes book, journal/papers, working papers (which are unofficial reports by researchers associated with the OECD), the well-known fact books, and, your favorite, STATISTICS!
• iLibrary still includes tons of the OECD books, so check there often. We hope to have the books available through the Library Catalog by December. If you think we might have an OECD publication, just ask our librarians!
• Pretty much everything seems to have an RSS feed now, which is really helpful. You could do a RSS for a journal, the main economic indicators, the latest releases in a particular theme, your favorite table, pretty much whatevs. They also provide citations for each individual piece.
• OECD.stat within iLibrary is the statistical warehouse. It provides access to wide range of OECD data sets from economic indicators to health issues stats. Metadata are available for all datasets and provide source information. Keep in mind that OECD's role is to aggregate and harmonize data, so they are getting most of it from the country's source agency.
• And speaking of health, OECD Health Data 2010 is out and is still quite comprehensive. It is linked on the front page and no longer requires downloading an application.

Those are just some highlights. I encourage you to consult OECD iLibrary for any international or comparative work with a social focus. Next month I will do a short tutorial demonstrating some of these features. In the meantime, have fun! Great stuff!

Cool tools from Roper Center

Interested in polling data and learning more about polling techniques? The Roper Center is just the resource for you! Check out their recent blog post on Education Tools and more.

Education Tools Available

Roper Center offers a series of tutorials on some of the fundamentals of public opinion polling, including definitions, examples, and explanations that serve to introduce interested students to the field of public opinion research, also covers the basics of analysis and interpretation of the results.

• POLLING 101: Fundamentals of Polling. Definitions, examples, explanations.
• POLLING 201: Analyzing Polls. Analysis techniques and data interpretation.
• Teaching Tools. Great exercises for students.

Hot Topic - Immigration

Amend constitution so children of illegal immigrants born in US do not get citizenship?


Survey by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Interviewing conducted by Abt SRBI, June 16-June 20, 2010. [USSRBI.062410P.R60]

Related information can be found by searching the Center's iPOLL Databank or by visiting Topics At A Glance--Immigration on the Roper Center website.

IPUMS-International rocks the world

World Cup style...OK, that was gratuitous, but IPUMS is almost as wonderful as the World Cup.

The Minnesota Population Center has loads of new goodies for all the data peeps out there. IPUMS-International recently announced the availability of 28 more census microdata samples, bringing the total to 158 (55 countries). They also have boundary files for many countries.

All is available to researchers and students at no cost from https://international.ipums.org/international Registration is required.

ICPSR Summer Program Workshop on “Health Care Change in the U.S."

New Details on the ICPSR Summer Program Workshop on “Health Care Change in the U.S.”

• Application deadline extended (June 9, 2010)
• Courses fees waived
• Limited number of travel stipends ($500) available
  

The ICPSR Summer Program is pleased to announce new details on the 5-day (August 2-6, 2010) workshop titled

“Health Care Change in the United States: Working With The Community Tracking Study and Health Tracking Surveys”

– sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

A description of the workshop follows and also can be found – along with information on how to register – at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/sumprog/courses/0121.

HEALTH CARE CHANGE IN THE UNITED STATES: WORKING WITH THE COMMUNITY TRACKING STUDY AND HEALTH TRACKING SURVEYS


With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) has periodically conducted national surveys of households and physicians and conducted comprehensive site visits in a set of local health care markets since 1996. The Community Tracking Study (CTS) is a large-scale longitudinal investigation of the evolution of the U.S. health system change and its effects on people and providers. This workshop will focus on the household and physician surveys conducted by HSC and available through ICPSR. The first four rounds of these surveys, called the CTS Household and Physician surveys, had complex samples primarily clustered in 60 nationally representative local healthcare markets, allowing both national and market estimates. Beginning in 2007, with round 5, surveys adopted simpler national samples and were renamed the HSC Health Tracking Household and Physician surveys.

The household surveys contain detailed information on people’s healthcare access, satisfaction, use of services and insurance coverage. Information about health status, sociodemographic characteristics and employment is also collected. Physician surveys ask about source of practice revenue, problems respondents face in practicing medicine, quality of care, access to services, information technology, sources of practice revenue and compensation, as well as questions about their practice arrangements and care practices.

This workshop will meet August 2-6 and cover key features of the CTS and Health Tracking Household and Physician surveys, while also providing instruction on their use and on the analysis of survey data in general. It will begin with presentations by HSC staff, who will describe study design, sampling procedures, questionnaire content, complex survey variance estimation, weighting, and other topics. Participants will be asked to familiarize themselves with the content of the either the 2007 household or 2008 physician surveys and formulate research projects. HSC and ICPSR staff will assist participants in developing and pursuing their research projects. During the last two days of the workshop, participants will hear from researchers who have used the CTS and HT surveys, continue working on their research projects, and explore other HSC surveys.

Application: Applicants need to include a one-page statement of their research interests and their curriculum vitae. Graduate students require a letter of support from their faculty adviser. All supporting materials can be submitted electronically through the Summer Program registration portal on each applicant's Summer Program account page.

Deadline: EXTENDED -- the new deadline for application is Wednesday June 9, 2010.

Fee: There will be no tuition fees for accepted participants.

Stipend: Robert Wood Johnson will offer travel stipends ($500 maximum) for a limited number of participants to attend the workshop.

Announcement of 2010 ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research

The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is pleased to announce the 2010 Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research.

As many subscribers to this list already know, the main component of the Summer Program is held on the campus of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Lectures and workshops on a wide variety of topics in research design, quantitative reasoning, statistical methods, and data processing are presented in two four-week sessions.

The first session runs from June 21, 2010 until July 16, 2010. The second session runs from July 19, 2010 until August 13, 2010.

The contents of the two sessions are largely independent of each other, although some second-session workshops do assume that participants are familiar with material from first-session courses.

The 2010 ICPSR Summer Program will also offer a number of three- to five-day workshops on both statistical and substantive topics throughout the summer. These shorter workshops are held in a variety of locations: Amherst, MA; Ann Arbor, MI; Bloomington, IN; Chapel Hill, NC; and New Haven, CT.

We are currently accepting applications for our four-week sessions and for all of our statistical short courses. The roster of substantive workshops is still being put together; a complete list of all courses will be sent out in the near future.

The 2010 application form, registration instructions, fee structure, and further information about the ICPSR Summer Program are all available on our web site:

http://icpsr.umich.edu/sumprog/

Please feel free to contact us with any questions at: sumprog@icpsr.umich.edu

Guilford County is schooling LA County!

Check out the US Census Bureau's Take 10 Map.

Wanna take bets on whose city will have the highest census participation rate? You can compare participation rates in your home state or county to others in the United States using the Take 10 Map. Currently the northern Midwest states are winning, but the rest of the country is close behind!

And don't forget to fill out and mail back your form. For more information, visit http://2010.census.gov/ and check out the information below from the NC Census office.



Making Sure You Are Counted

by NC Census April 06, 2010

April 1 – Census Day – has come and gone, and it is important that everyone be a part of the 2010 Census count.

What do you do if you have misplaced your Census questionnaire?

First, remember that April 1 is NOT a deadline or a due date. You can still participate in the Census.

The 2010 Census is a count of everyone where they reside. While most addresses were mailed questionnaires in mid-March, “group quarters” such as college dorms, military barracks, residential homes, prisons, etc. are counted by the US Census Bureau in a slightly different process that began on April 1 and runs through mid-May. If you reside in a group quarters situation, the Census is coming to you.

If you live in a traditional residence such as a house or apartment and need a replacement 2010 Census questionnaire, you can participate in the Census through different options.

You can wait. The US Census Bureau is mailing replacement forms to some areas, and you may receive a replacement form in your mailbox. Census workers will also begin visiting addresses that did not return a Census questionnaire in May, and you can participate in the 2010 Census by answering the questions with the Census worker.

You can call. If you do not want to wait, Questionnaire Assistance Centers and Be Counted sites can also provide you with replacement forms. Currently the Telephone Questionnaire Assistance Center can answer questions about completing your Census form, but beginning on April 12 the TQAC can have replacement forms mailed to your home. You can reach the telephone Questionnaire Assistance Center at the following numbers:

English 1-866-872-6868
Chinese 1-866-935-2010
Korean 1-866-955-2010
Russian 1-866-965-2010
Spanish 1-866-928-2010
Vietnamese 1-866-945-2010
TDD 1-866-783-2010 (for hearing impaired)

You can visit. There are over 1,000 Questionnaire Assistance Centers located in public areas such as public libraries and community centers across North Carolina. You may stop by your nearest QAC to pick up a replacement form. Visit the Take 10 Map to locate the nearest Questionnaire Assistance Center in your neighborhood.

UNCG's 2010 Census Page

Check out our new 2010 Census page! It brings together links of interest to the UNCG community including information about the Census in NC. And don't forget to mail back your form!

Cool reports from Euromonitor's GMID!

Check out these new reports from GMID:

Top 10 consumer trends for 2009

All expectations are that this will be a year of guarded consumption for credit-crunched consumers globally – but consumption is more resilient than people might think and many commentators point out that the global consumer mindset is tuned to recession-spending. CLICK HERE to read more

Mapping global pollution: The world's biggest polluters

The United Nations Climate Change Summit is taking place in December 2009 in Copenhagen with the aim of coming up with a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol for global emissions targets, which are due to expire in 2012. 192 countries are involved but a divide exists between emerging markets and advanced economies on where responsibility lies for reducing emissions. China is the world's largest polluter followed by the USA but emerging markets generally lag behind in terms of per capita emissions. CLICK HERE to read more

Indian consumers in 2020: A look into the future

A fast growing economy and a rising number of affluent consumers have pushed India into the league of most brand conscious countries globally. Many Indian consumers today are savvy shoppers who are educated, know their brands and are ready to spend more on premium lifestyle products and entertainment. CLICK HERE to read more

For more reports, check out Euromonitor's Global Market Information Database.

NCAA data available @ ICPSR

ICPSR has released a new thematic archive called NCAA Student-Athlete Experiences Data Archive. It will serve as a repository for publicly available NCAA data on a variety of topics, such as graduation rates, academic progress, and more. Currently only the NCAA Division I Academic Progress Rate 2009 dataset is available, but in 2010 they will add the Graduation Success Rate Public-Use dataset and more. In addition, the Progress Rate 2009 data can be analyzed online.

The NCAA archive looks to be a great resource for scholars interested in student-athletes. Stop by the website to see their new content!

Get the Facts about the 2010 Census

A phony Better Business Bureau email is circulating the intertubes. Check out the press release from the BBB below. As we enter the crunch time for the Census, people will start spreading misinformation. Don't fall for the lies. Keep yourself informed!

Phony BBB E-mail Spreads Fiction about 2010 Census; Get the Facts

An e-mail which falsely claims to be from the Better Business Bureau about the upcoming 2010 Census is inaccurate and BBB is advising consumers to get the facts.

How to Identify a Census Field Representative
If a U.S. Census Bureau employee knocks on your door, here are some recognition tips to assure the validity of the field representative:

• The field representative must present an ID badge that contains a Department of Commerce watermark and expiration date. The field representative may also be carrying a bag with a Census Bureau logo.
• The field representative will provide you with supervisor contact information and/or the Regional Office phone number for verification, if asked.
• The field representative will provide you with a letter from the Census Bureau Director on official letterhead.

When Field Representatives will be Going Door-to-Door

• From April to July 2010, we will knock on the door of every
  household that does not mail back a completed 2010 Census form.
• It’s critical that you take just 10 minutes to fill out and mail back your form rather than wait for a census worker to show up on your doorstep. About $85 million in taxpayer dollars are saved for every one percent increase in mail response.
• The Census Bureau must get a census form to – and a completed form back from – every residence in the United States. That’s more than 130 million addresses. This is why the census is the largest domestic mobilization our nation undertakes.

What the 2010 Census DOES NOT Ask

• Field representatives will never ask you for your social security number, bank account number, or credit card number. Census workers also never solicit for donations and will never contact you by e-mail.

The Census is Safe

• The 2010 Census will ask for name, gender, age, race, ethnicity, relationship, and whether you own or rent your home – just 10 simple questions that will take about 10 minutes to answer.
• Your answers are protected by law and are not shared with anyone.
• The Census Bureau safeguards all census responses to the highest security standards available.

For more information about the upcoming 2010 Census visit www.census.gov/2010census

ICPSR presents: the new "Research Connections" website!

ICPSR will provide a webinar on January 25 on its new "Research Connections" website. More information below:

Research Connections offers a comprehensive, easily searchable collection of more than 15,000 resources from the many disciplines related to child care and early education.

Some of the new tools we'll demonstrate:
• Filter your search results by author, state, peer reviewed journal, resource type, or acquisition date to quickly find the resources you need.
• Save your search and receive notices when new resources are added that meet your saved search criteria.
• Browse the collection by topic to fully explore your areas of interest.
• Search for variables in individual datasets to easily find the data you want.

This webinar is FREE and open to the public. Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/739004691

Title: Introducing the New "Research Connections" Website!
Date: Monday, January 25, 2010
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Pop quiz hot shot: What are the top 10 largest cities in Croatia?

New in Euromonitor Global Market Information Database: "Cities are drivers of economic growth and at the same time cities are the result of economic growth. City consumers are more brand-aware and have higher disposable incomes and tend to be trend-setters. Emerging markets are home to some of the world’s most dynamic and fast-growing cities. The data covers the largest 10 cities in each country and are available for 82 countries from 1998-2015."

From within GMID, the data can be found by selecting urban population:

And the answer is...

Stop back by for an upcoming quick start tutorial on accessing GMID's country data.