Webinar: American Community Survey Resources, Shortcuts, and Tools Workshop

An array of resources and tools can be used with American Community Survey (ACS) data to enhance the efficiency and proficiency of data users. However, given the volume of information available from the U.S. Census Bureau and elsewhere, learning about these resources and tools may be challenging for some users.

In this 90-minute workshop, expert data users from PRB, the Census Bureau, and the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) walked through some of their favorite shortcuts, resources, and tools to help data users maximize their experience analyzing ACS data.

Attendees were first introduced to the ACS data users group, an online community that provides help to members seeking to better understand ACS data and methods. The second presentation focused on accessing Census data via the API and MDAT, including basics such as how to create a call for an estimate in the API and access data through the public microdata sets (MDAT) on data.census.gov.

The third panelist provided a high-level overview of how to use R and the tidycensus package to execute commands such as switching between spatial scales, outputting a map, and looping through a query to assemble a longitudinal series from the ACS.

Presenters:

Lillian Kilduff, Research Analyst, PRB
Mary McKay, Survey Statistician, American Community Survey Office
Kevin Kane, Program Manager, Southern California Association of Governments

Download a PDF version of the slides:

Transcript: Transcript ACS Tools and Resources Webinar.pdf