Census Data

For this assignment I decided to create a table with Census information from the American Community Survey website. I was very surprised by the fact that such kind of Survey was done every 10 years before. Now American Community Survey will improve the situation, providing economic, social, demographic, and housing information to the communities every year, instead of once in 10 years.

From the site I learned much interesting information about collecting the data for the Census. Data can be collected by mail (self-enumeration through mail-out/mail-back), telephone (computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) and by personal visits (Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI).

Knowledge of the results of the ACS can help to solve different problems and needs of the population. I study at the Department of Geography and Planning. Though I am a geography major, I am also interested in planning courses. And I know that such kind of information from the Census is very important for planners. Planners can estimate demographic, economic, social and housing characteristics. If you know, for example, which areas are extremely rural and which are not so populated, you can better plan medical facilities, educational institutions and so on. Accurate knowledge of these characteristics helps planners making decisions on development that is suitable for future residents. It helps in economic development, for business decision making. It can be used by government as well - knowledge of standard level of leaving can help to plan the budget properly (pensions, insurance and welfare payments, cash benefits). These problems are really difficult to solve without results of ACS (53 population variables, and 42 housing variables).

ACS provides local communities with more up-to-date and accurate data to help them better plan to address the needs of their citizens.

I found a lot of useful information on the ACS website. As an example I created a table which shows some general facts for three counties.

I did not like the navigation on this site. After reading Page Design tutorial from the Yale Web Style Guide I can say that this web site was not created according all the requirements to make it easy to explore and read. It took me some time to find the necessary information. I think that this site lacks visual hierarchy and logic. That is the main problem of many modern sites. They have good information inside and very complicated navigation. So, you should always think about your readers while creating a good web site.