Proposed changes to the ACS Summary File format

The ACS Office at the Census Bureau is currently testing a new format for the ACS Summary File, which is a comma-delimited text file that contains all the Detailed Tables for the ACS.  

Information about the proposed updates to the ACS Summary File are described on the Census Bureau's website. 

We are starting this new Discussion Thread so that ACS data users can post any comments or questions about the proposes changes. ACS Summary File users are also encouraged to participate in the webinar scheduled for this afternoon on this topic.

Parents
  • As a longtime ACS Summary File user, this is a huge, and welcome change. Perhaps the best improvement is having column headers in the data files. This not only reduces the complexity in using the files, but it lessens the possibility of errors.

    One request: When the data is made available, it would be helpful for the files to be available as a bulk download, for people that want the entire dataset for all geography levels for the whole country. This could mean as a single (or set) of compressed files, or folders in a real FTP page, so they could be accessed like a file system (rather than a web page).

    Another suggestion: Perhaps the data files could have a column with the time frame of the data. Even though this would only be one value for the whole file (the year of the data), it would help when loading it into a database.

    Thank you this change!

Reply
  • As a longtime ACS Summary File user, this is a huge, and welcome change. Perhaps the best improvement is having column headers in the data files. This not only reduces the complexity in using the files, but it lessens the possibility of errors.

    One request: When the data is made available, it would be helpful for the files to be available as a bulk download, for people that want the entire dataset for all geography levels for the whole country. This could mean as a single (or set) of compressed files, or folders in a real FTP page, so they could be accessed like a file system (rather than a web page).

    Another suggestion: Perhaps the data files could have a column with the time frame of the data. Even though this would only be one value for the whole file (the year of the data), it would help when loading it into a database.

    Thank you this change!

Children
  • The FTP site includes a file that I think is the complete data file (acsdt5y2018.zip) --but it's listed as 11 gigabytes. After unzipping, that's a TON of data to sift through. I also appreciate having the column headers, and I like your suggestion to add the time period of the data. But for people (like me) who need data from many tables but only one or two states, it's going to be extremely difficult to have the files separated by tables rather than by states. I would not look forward to reading data for the entire country for every single table I need.

  • Oh for sure, it shouldn't be available exclusively as a single compressed file! The way the files are currently available, there are compressed folders for all larger geographies and tracts and block groups, as well as folders with individual files for each state/table. Continuing to have these various options would be great.