How to Use HealthyCity.org and Learn the ABCs of Data
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Have you ever been excited about the world of data, but not sure where to begin? What if you could learn the basics of data and access all that you need in one place? HealthyCity.org provides one of the largest community resource and data hubs in California, pulling information from trusted and reliable data sources and presenting it in user-friendly formats for local communities throughout the state. Learn about trusted data sources, how to interpret data and how to use it to meet your research and advocacy needs. This webinar will discuss the power of primary and secondary data, tips for finding and presenting data specifically on www.healthycity.org as well as examples of how data has been utilized for community based research and advocacy. (Click on the link to read more)
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How to Use HealthyCity.org and Learn the ABCs of Data
- 1. Information + action for social change ABC’s of Data February 9, 2012
- 2. Healthy City is a project of… A public policy change organization rooted in the civil rights movement
- 3. …is an information + action resource that unites rigorous research, community voices and innovative technologies to solve the root causes of social inequity ONLINE MAPPING TECHNOLOGY DIRECT TECHNICAL SUPPORT TO: www.HealthyCity.org COMMUNITY ORGS FOUNDATIONS GOVERNMENT COMMUNITY RESEARCH LAB Training community groups to lead and sustain action-oriented research & technology projects
- 4. Learning Objectives You will learn… • What data is and what different types of data exist • About trusted data sources like the US Census and CA Health Interview Survey • How to understand and work with some common data limitations • How to use data on HealthyCity.org including maps and charts • Tips for presenting and displaying data in your work
- 5. Data, Data, Data • Data consist of measurements of any characteristic of interest. Basically, anything about everything around you! Ex. Your age, the size of your household, the number of schools in your neighborhood, etc. • What data do you have or use?
- 6. Data, Data, Data There are all types of data around us! Most of your organizations probably already have data that you’ve collected and handle on a daily basis. Door knocking records How many people your organization serves Financial contributions
- 7. Data, Data, Data Primary & Secondary Data • Primary – Data that you collect! • Secondary – Data that another entity collects and others can use, such as the Census, Department of Health, another researcher, agency, etc. Quantitative & Qualitative Data • Qualitative – Data that consist of non-numerical observations, primarily focus on describing attributes, properties or some other kind of meaning • Quantitative – Data that can be expressed numerically These types of data are often used together to convey a greater richness of meaning than using only one type.
- 8. Time to Share: How have you used data or maps in your work? 1957 Wally Freeland
- 9. Data Sources on HealthyCity.org And many more…
- 10. Data Source Tips Key Points to Keep in Mind: • What is the original source and how reliable is it? • How old is the data? • How was the data gathered and analyzed? • How complete is the data? • What are the pros and cons for a specific dataset?
- 11. Data Sources & Data Directory
- 12. List of all Data Sources on HealthyCity.org List of all data on HealthyCity.org
- 13. Click a Target and explore data
- 14. Click a Sub- Category
- 15. Click an Indicator and explore further
- 16. Data Years Is it Geographic aggregatable? Units Variables
- 17. Aggregation ZIP Codes Yuba County ? Can you aggregate the number of births by ZIP Code to find out the total number of births in Yuba County? Yes, because… The data values are raw numbers such as number of housing units or population
- 18. Aggregation ZIP Codes Yuba County X ? Can you aggregate the birth rates by ZIP Code to find out the birth rate in Yuba County? No, because… The data values are percentages or rates, such as percentage of families in poverty or drop out rate
- 19. Data Lingo Recap • Indicators Age, Employment Status • Variables Ages 0-5, Currently Employed • Data Levels ZIP Code, Service Planning Area, County • Universe Total Population, Civilian Population Age 16 and Over • Metadata Supporting information about the dataset such as description, source, year, universe • Aggregation Combining data values from smaller geographies to create a data value for a larger geography
- 22. Types of Data on HealthyCity.org Population Characteristics Thematic And much more… Civic Participation Employment, Income & Poverty Health Conditions, Diseases, Inju ries and Deaths Crime & Public Safety Housing
- 23. Types of Data on HealthyCity.org Services & Points Social Services & Nonprofits Hospitals and FQHCs Public & Private Schools Grocery Stores & WIC Vendors Alcohol Outlets & Toxic Sites And much more…
- 25. Click on Change to select your geography
- 26. Select “City”, then “Riverside”
- 27. Click a “Target” to select data
- 29. Add a Click the “i” toolof data: second layer and Families in Poverty or Median then click on map to Click see data values Customize to Household Income modify your map Share your map: • Export to Word • Print • Save • Email Change Data Level to view See range of data data by a different values in the Legend geographical unit
- 30. Customize: • Absolute value or Percentage value • Number of classes • Colors • Data Range
- 31. Data Ranges Black or African American (Non-Hispanic or Latino) Equal Interval Quantile Equal Interval Quantile
- 34. Click on Change to select your geography
- 35. Select “County”, then “Fresno”
- 36. Click a “Target” to select data
- 39. Select a different indicator Births in Fresno County: 12.99% are to Mother’s Under 20 56.24% are Mother’s Ages 20-29
- 40. How does this compare to the state of California? View other years of data or multiple years at once Ability to view different types of charts
- 41. Click Show/Hide description to see details Variable Universe, Sourc e, Year Click Show/Hide List to see data level used for aggregation
- 42. Click Show/Hide List to see list of geographies used to aggregate
- 43. Data Visualizations • Colorful, engaging •Sources are cited Healthy City, 2011 Data Source: US Census 2010 Healthy City, 2011 Data Source: US Census 2010 Healthy City, 2011 Data Source: US Census 2010 •Issues displayed are important to your goal • Clear and easy to understand
- 44. Data Visualizations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xekEXM0V onc
- 45. Data Visualizations Pie charts are useful for showing significant differences in percentages as parts of a whole. *Remember—values need to add up to 100% Line graphs are useful for showing changes over time. Bar graphs are useful for Comparing data between different groups or showing changes over time.
- 46. Why Are Maps Useful Visualizations? • Help reveal larger place-based dynamics that numbers by themselves cannot • Connect community knowledge and data to location • Support strategy through communicating patterns to a broad audience, clearly, quickly, and dramatically
- 47. Why Are Maps Useful Visualizations? Organizations can use maps to: • Act on an issue/Confirm action • Strategy: Community Organizing • Strategy: Advocacy • Highlight an issue or a specific aspect of an issue • Strategy: Media/Communications • Strategy: Policy • Strategy: Grantwriting
- 48. Maps for Advocacy Public Awareness on Distribution of Healthy/Unhealthy Food Resources – Los Angeles, CA
- 49. Monthly Blog about New and Updated Data
- 50. Data Blog Click Filter and choose“data” Click Help Center to view User Guide, Video Tutorials
- 51. Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- HealthyCity.org provides one of the largest community resource and data hubs in California, pulling information from trusted and reliable data sources and presenting it in user-friendly formats for local communities throughout the state. Learn about trusted data sources, how to interpret data and how to use it to meet your research and advocacy needs.
- Education: The Educational Opportunity program expands educational opportunities for low-income children from birth through high school graduation and ensures school facilities for all.Urban Peace: program at Advancement Project reduces and prevents community violence, making poor neighborhoods safer so that children can learn, families can thrive and communities can prosper.EPF:program reveals significant discrepancies between the allocation of public funds and the needs of low-income communities and communities of color, and makes public finance more transparent for improved advocacy and engagement.HC: is an information + action resource for California that unites community voices, rigorous research and innovative technologies to solve the root causes of social inequity.
- Agenda Slide
- Here give an opportunity for the audience to throw out suggestions of data they are familiar with, have used before, are currently using, or are interested in.
- Most of the data seen on our site is quantitative in nature, counts of people that fall into a certain category. The qualitative piece often comes in from attitudes of residents, that you can gather using short or in-depth interviews of residents in your community, etc. Qualitative data describes whereas quantitative data defines/measures. Ex: An interview of community residents’ attitudes on police presence in their neighborhood. Quantitative Ex: The count of people without health insurance in Los Angeles County.
- We have data from a wide variety of sources such as the US Census, CA Health Interview Survey, CA Dept of Ed and more. We also have User Uploaded data which is clearly labeled as such on HC.org and which we do not verify or vet. Here are some tips for vetting data sources you encounter.
- Is it reliable? Would the same survey produce the same results again? This is related to consistency and stability of the data collection method.Is it valid? How well does it measure what it says it measures?
- Complete list of all of our data sources with links back to their websites.
- Variables: Ages 0-5, Percentage AdvancedIndicators: Age, 3rd Grade English-Language Arts Levels
- Suppose you only have data, such as population, by county. Can you “aggregate” the data and come up with a population value for a larger geography like state?
- Data values with margins of error, which includes all ACS data are also non-aggregatable. Example: ACS 2005-09 5-Year Veterans Population for Yuba City is 4,938 (4,580 ~ 5,296).That means that the true value is somewhere between 4,580 and 5,296.
- Indicator: Gen. CharacteristicVariable: Specific CharacteristicData Levels: Although your community or place may be identified by specific street boundaries, geographies are spatial (non-physical) boundaries, such as census tracts or ZIP codes. Administrative data, or data collected by persons, organizations or departments of government for their own purposes but often made available for public use, is usually collected for these geographies. To use this type of data in your research, particularly for making comparisons over time using multiple years of data, you will need to determine which geographies represent your community or place.Universe: Population/people included in the datasetMetadata is data about data! Source, year, methodology, geographical coverage, description of indicator/variables, data levels available.
- Here’s where you’ll see some of those things in the Map Room.
- Thematic – data aggregated to political, jurisdictional, or other boundaries such as counties and ZIP Codes. For example the number of families in poverty or the number of unemployed civilians in a city are displayed as thematic layers on our maps.Thematic/Indicator dataDemographic (population, educational attainment, ethnicity, etc.)Civic ParticipationChild WelfareChild Care & Early EducationIncome & PovertyEmploymentNonprofit InfrastructureEnvironment & Land UseHealth – Birth, Prenatal & ChildHealth - Conditions, Disease & InjuryHealth – DeathsHealth - Insurance & accessHealth – Physical Activity & NutritionNeighborhood & CommunityCrime & Public SafetyHousing
- Viewing point and thematic data together enables you to get an initial picture of the distribution of resources, while understanding a particular characteristic about an area. For example, are there educational resources in areas with low educational attainment? Is there access to fresh food in areas with a high concentration of people with diabetes?Point DataGrocery StoresAlcohol OutletsNonprofit OrganizationsSchools (Public & Private)WIC Agencies & VendorsHospitals (OSHPD)Head Start AgenciesChild Care CentersEPA Hazard SitesFed. Qualified Health Centers (FQHC)Fast FoodBanks v. Check CashingCommunity Services (detailed Social Service data from 2-1-1 for 16 counties: Over 30,000 Service sites in CA; includes: Basic Needs, Legal Services, Education, Health Care, Employment, and many other Community Services)
- Today we’ll look at two of the functions on HC.org: Maps and Charts. We’ll start with maps.You can access thematic data in the Map Room either by clicking on the Maps link at the top of the page or by using one of the quick links in the middle of the page which let you skip a few steps if you already know what you want to do.
- We now see a map of HS grads in the city of Riverside. In this box you will see the name of the indicator you chose along with its metadata such as description, universe, source, year. As well as the data level, which is the geography at which the data is displayed. In this case it is Census Tract but if you were mapping the whole state of CA, you may want to look at a different data level such as County. HC.org automatically chooses a data level for you based on the geography you choose. However, you can always change it here if you want to see more/less detail (as long as data is available at multiple levels).Second, you’ll notice the legend in the bottom right corner, this shows you the range of values for the whole dataset, the indicator/variable name and the data level.Finally, you can view 2 thematic datasets at a time on HC.org, so you could click another Target and add a second characteristic like Percent of Families in Poverty or Median Household Income.
- You can change the color scheme and the data ranges among other things.
- Quantile: Each class contains an equal number of features. Eg: If you have 40 ZIP Codes in your data set and you have 4 categories/data classes, then each category will have 10 ZIP Codes within it.Equal Interval: Divides the range of values into equal-sized sub-ranges. Eg: If your data values range from 0-100% and you have 4 categories/data classes, you will see the following categories: 0-25%, 26-50%, 51-75% and 76-100%.Percent of African-Americans in California = 5.8%…Use Quantile to see where the highest concentrations of small populations areIn areas with higher Percent of African-Americans like south Los Angeles,…Use Equal Interval to see variation in areas with highly concentrated populations
- You can access the Data Room using these links
- In this example we are looking at a table and chart of Births by Mother’s Age in Fresno County. We get the information in table and chart form.
- You can compare many geographies in the Data Room. You can also compare geographies in the Map Room but it is limited to two at a time. You can use this drop-down menu to change which year of data you are viewing (if >1 is available). In addition, you can view all years of data available at once, allowing you to trend data over time (data permitting). Finally, you can also change the type of chart from Bar to Pie to Stacked. Remember, pieces of the pie chart must add up to 100%!
- Here’s where you’ll find the metadata in the Data Room. Whenever you see a red number next to your geography, that means the data is aggregated. It is a good idea to note which data level is being used for the aggregation. At this time you are not able to change the data level in the Data Room, although you can in the Map Room. The red number can also indicate missing data. Click on Show List to see geographies in your aggregation, ie: ZIP Codes, which are missing data.
- Why use visuals? Gives people perspective provides context helps people relateThese are some things we’ve found helpful about visuals. Anything you want to add that would be key for a visual?
- -Ex. 36% of all people prefer apple pie.-Ex. People buy more oranges compared to mangos. Do not have to add up to 100%. May also show change in number of apples bought over time.-Ex. population change growth over time comparing males and females.
- Data Updates – Click Features & News to access our Healthy City blog
- Click on the Filter menu and select “data” to see our monthly data updates blog and any other data-related postsClick Help Center to find