COMMUNITY PORTRAITS
ASSIGNMENT #2A
DUE IN SESSION #3
All of the steps in this assignment will be covered in detail in Sessions #1. Part of Session #2 will be held in the CPCS Computer Lab.
This assignment involves obtaining and organizing basic Census data on population, housing and economic data about your chosen community for 1990.
If your community is an entire city or town, then you will need to obtain Census data for that city or town. If, however, your community is a neighborhood of Boston or another city, you should obtain Census data for one Census tract within the neighborhood.
Note on sources:
You are very strongly encouraged to obtain the 1990 Census data from the Census Bureau website, rather than seeking it at a local agency or library.
One of the main reasons for using the website is that some local agencies only have Census data from the "short-form" Census questionnaires, not the "long-form" questionnaires. Census data from the long-form questionnaires is sometimes referred to as Summary Tape File 3 (STF 3 or STF 3A), while short-form data is known as STF 1A. If you do seek the data locally, you must make sure that it is STF 3A, NOT STF 1A.
To locate the STF3A data for 1990 (and 2000), you need to know the County in which your community is located. Also, if you are looking at a neighborhood within a city or town, you need to know the number of the Census Tract you are studying (You can find out the Census Tract number from a link within the Census "Bureau website http://www.factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet).
All of the 1990 Census information that you need for this assignment is available at the Census Bureau website: http://www.factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet
For completing this assignment, you will need to obtain 1990 data from the Census website in the following STF3A Detailed Tables for the city, town or census tract you are studying:
P1, P7, P8, P10, P13, , P19, P70, P78, P80, P80A, P123, P127, H1, H8, H20, H43A, H52A, H61A
If you are working at home, you can either print out the tables after you bring them up onto your computer screen, or you can download them disk. If you are working at the University, you must download to disk and print off-line later.
Organizing and Presenting the Census Data:
In order to facilitate this assignment, it is suggested that you use the set of blank tables attached to this assignment, which you can xerox, or make a similar set of blank tables on your own. You can then insert the actual data for 1990 (and later for 1980) as you obtain it. As an alternative, if you have spreadsheet software (e.g., QuatroPro, Excell, Lotus) and are skilled in using it, you may set up a spreadsheet using the same format as the attached blank tables, then enter the data.
After you have obtained and entered all of the required data from the 1990 Census, you then have to compute the percentage distributions for each data item, entering each percent into its appropriate place on the forms. The process of computing percents will covered in class in Session #2. Be sure to bring your pocket calculator to class every week.