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.