| |
Data Now
by Mike Meshek
 |
| Making data available over the World Wide Web eases educators' jobs. |
College educators now also share with their students Internet tools that facilitate the use of demographic data. The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) provides two such tools on the World Wide Web.
SEDAC's DDViewer allows users at all levels of ability to selectively map Census data. From more than 200 Census variables, users first select the population, housing, education, and employment data of their choice, then map the data at the state, county, Census tract, or blockgroup level. In a matter of minutes, a user can create, for example, a map of median housing values for all California county subdivisions.
Joseph Molnar, a Professor of Rural Sociology at Auburn University, was studying Alabama's farm population at the county level when he found DDViewer. "I'd never seen the enumeration district data for population in Alabama displayed, and that was quite instructive," said Molnar, who plans to expose his research methods class to DDViewer. "I'll have them make a map on some variable just to get their feet wet and get an intuitive grasp of the research possibilities," said Molnar. "So, when they come to a problem, they can bring it to bear with other data sources to answer a research question."
Additionally, SEDAC is a mirror site for Geocorr, a "geographic correspondence" tool that provides users with access to the Master Area Block Level Equivalency (MABLE), a collection of state-level data sets containing almost seven million entries. With Geocorr, users can correlate Census variables by creating custom reports relating variables across different Census "geographies." A Geocorr user could, for example, relate selected California counties (one "geography") with ZIP codes (a different "geography").
Carolyn White, Program Coordinator for the University of Illinois's Office of Computing and Communication for Social Sciences, provides instructional and research support to social sciences faculty, staff, and students. White often sends searchers to the Geocorr site. "You can get what you need in minutes," White said, "and with its tutorial, I can just point them to the Web."
Delivering the Basics
The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) is operated by the Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN). SEDAC delivers information products and services integrating social and natural sciences.
SEDAC services save Steven Levitt time and computer resources: "It used to be when you needed to use these data, it would take a research assistant a summer to manually construct the data set from tapes," he said. Now, he merely sends SEDAC an e-mail message identifying the two dozen or so Census data variables his research requires, and "the next day the data arrives ready to go." In this way, Levitt gets only what he needs (rather than the hundreds of Census variables available), thereby also saving his computing resources. "Also, you know it's right, as opposed to not being sure what you or your research assistant has created," he said.
Tom Steahr also praised SEDAC DDViewer's efficiency. Steahr said he used the tool to scan Connecticut's poverty distributions in relationship to Rhode Island and Massachusetts, southern New England's other two states. "DDViewer helped me place my problem in a broader geographic context, in a quick way," he said. Joseph Molnar found DDViewer to be "a great first step." "It was excellent," he said. "I'm very grateful for the SEDAC site, especially in terms of initial casting about for possibilities. It provided a significant sort of foundational step toward a more complex activity that I did wind up doing, and what seems to be a fairly well-received publication by the agencies." |
