American Community Survey (ACS)

Federal Register Notice #3510-07-P

These pages were created to provide materials in support of Federal Register Notice #3510-07-P in which the Bureau of the Census (Census Bureau) is requesting comments on current and proposed data products of the American Community Survey.

Full text of the above mentioned notice and instructions on submitting comments.

Current Products -- Example Images and Listings

• Base Tables - Simple descriptive tabulations of basic concepts and variables
  • Example Image: Current - image representation of current Base Table.
  • Tables List - pdf document containing a full listing of the ACS base tables organized by subject area.

• Tabular Profiles – Key summary measures, derived measures (e.g., medians), and collapsed distributions of variables selected from the Base Tables.
  • Example Image: Current - partial image representation of each of the four tables within the current tabular profile
  • Example Image: Revised - partial sketch of proposed revised tabular profile which shows several years of data, and indicates with the use of an asterisk where there has been statistically significant change

• Narrative Profiles – Short prose narratives with simple graphs based on some of the summary information in the Tabular Profiles.
  • Example Image: Current - partial image representation of current narrative profile

• Geographic Ranking Tables – Tables and related graphs that show the rank order of geographic areas on a key statistic or derived measure.
  • Example Image: Current - image representation of a Ranking Table with sublinks to a image representation of a ranking graph and a partial image representation of statistical significance chart.
  • Tables List - pdf document containing a listing of the 18 current ranking tables and the additional 67 proposed topics.

Proposed Products

• Subject Tables – predefined tables with frequently requested information on a single topic for a single geographic area.
  • Example Image: Proposed - partial sketch of proposed Subject Table.
  • Tables List - pdf document containing a full listing of of Proposed Subject Areas.

• Subpopulation Profiles – This new product would provide certain characteristics from the Tabular Profiles for a specific race or ethnic group (e.g., Alaska Natives) or population subgroup (e.g., people ages 60 and over).
  • Example Image: Proposed - partial sketch of proposed subpopulation table

• Thematic Maps – Thematic maps are similar to Geographic Ranking Tables. They have the added advantage of visually displaying on a map the geographic variation of a key summary measure or derived measure.
  • Example Image - image of a Census 2000 Thematic Map

• Analytic Reports (in an early development phase) – These could be short documents, two to three pages, on a single topic or theme, or they could be longer documents covering several topics or the entire content of the survey.

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