1997 Economic Census on American FactFinder® |
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| Quick Reports | Building a Query | Creating a Map | Limitations to AFF |
Limitations to AFF |
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Scope
AFF does not access ZIP Code Statistics, Nonemployer Statistics, nor any of the 1997 Economic Census data sets that are classified by SIC. These include:
Limited number of records
AFF does not allow the user to view or manipulate more than 10,000 records at a time. During initial data retrieval, the user has to "change selections", reducing the number of areas and/or industries viewed, until the 10,000 maximum is observed.
This is particularly awkward when attempting to download data that has more than 10,000 elements, for example, in retrieving retail trade totals for all places nationwide, or for downloading all data for the areas in a state.
Quirky download formats
AFF produces download files in comma-delimited or tab-delimited formats. These formats would normally be ideal since comma-delimited files can be imported by nearly all types of data manipulation software. Unfortunately, AFF exports numeric values as if they were character strings, enclosed in quotes, with embedded commas between hundreds and thousands, between thousands and millions, etc. Further, heading lines are included which ignore the field structure of the following data.
The one package that seems to deal well with AFF download files is MS Excel, which treats numbers as values that can be calculated even though they were originally read in as character strings. In some cases it may be advantageous to use Excel as a preprocessor to create .dbf or other output formats for other software.
A disadvantage of using Excel to manipulate output is that it drops leading zeros in FIPS state, county, or other geographic area codes; for example, state code 06 becomes 6. This would be significant to a mapping program. (To reinstate leading zeroes in Excel, right-click on the appropriate column heading, select Format Cells, then select Custom under Category in the Number tab, and then enter into the "Type" box a string of zeroes equal to the number of characters in the code--2 for a state code, 3 for a county code, etc.)
A few packages actually do better importing displays from AFF that have been saved as HTML files through your browsers File...Save As... functionality. Nonetheless, AFF displays to the screen are limited to 100 lines (except for Geography Quick Reports), limiting the usefulness of this technique.
The CD-ROM alternative
1997 Economic Census CD-ROMs include both SIC-based and NAICS-based data sets. Their Windows-based software does not limit the number of records that can be accessed or manipulated. The CD-ROM software also allows downloading in a wider variety of formats.
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