Preliminary findings about the selection of U.S. census data by state and local government agencies and nonprofit organizations

Abstract

Historically, accurately determining the data needs of state and local government agencies and nonprofit organizations has been difficult. Many of these types of organizations participate in the Census Bureau's State Data Center and Business/Industry Data Center programs. This paper presents preliminary findings of a diary-based study that looks at the census data used by over 200 organizations participating in these programs. It is possible to determine objectively the relative demand for various data subjects utilized by having staff of these agencies record summaries of the census data, including decennial and economic censuses and current statistics. It is further possible to determine the frequency with which these data are used along subject and geographic lines. While the diaries are being maintained over the period of one year, this paper presents findings based on the first three months of these diaries covering about 2,000 individual data requests. The preliminary findings reported in this paper indicate that these organizations routinely use a very wide variety of census data covering the full range of geographic detail. Additionally, this paper looks at the census data used by various types of organizations.