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Editor: Joanne Juhnke, Associate Special Librarian
February 2003 The Data Is Blowin' in the Wind Belize Central Statistical Office
Open access to U.S. government information underwent changes
after September 11. Organizations tracking removals from government
web sites, such as OMB Watch (http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/213/1/1/)
and the Government While the spate of removals has slowed to a trickle, the decision-making process for making material available in the first place appears to have shifted. A March 19, 2002 memo from the White House Chief of Staff urged agencies to carefully control “information that could be misused to harm the security of our nation and the safety of our people.” (http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/foiapost/2002foiapost10.htm). In addition to existing categories of classified, reclassified, and declassified information that should be regarded with caution, the memo created a new category of “sensitive but unclassified.” Materials, including data, withheld on the basis of this new category will be much harder to track than those materials which were formerly available and then removed. Another political way in which data may disappear is through the cessation of funding. In a recent example, a Labor Department program tracking mass layoffs was quietly ended after the November numbers were released. Articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post blamed political motives, pointing out that the program was abandoned once before during troubled economic times in 1992, only to be reinstated in the next administration in 1994. Finally, data can be “blown away” before even being collected, if funding is not forthcoming. In the version of the 2003 appropriations bill passed by the Senate in late January, the funding for the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) fell considerably short of the President’s FY03 budget request. While funding for the 31 ACS test sites would be continued, the bill would not allow for the full ACS roll-out originally envisioned for 2003. The vigilance of individuals and organizations will be
essential as the winds continue to blow. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID): The 2001 Data and 2001 Income Plus are now available at the PSID web site, http://www.isr.umich.edu/src/psid/. American Housing Survey (AHS): The new 2001 national AHS public use dataset is available for downloading from the HUD USER web site at http://www.huduser.org/datasets/ahs/ahsdata01.html. National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS): 2001 data has been released for mature women and young women cohorts. These two files can be downloaded at http://www.nlsinfo.org/ordering/display_db.php3. For quick links to the latest news at other selected data websites,
please visit
DataFerrett in Java Beta-release The U.S. Census Bureau has released a Java version of
DataFerrett. It is available at
There are still some bugs with this beta release. The DataFerrett team
welcomes any feedback. If you are interested in trying out this new
tool, you can download the DataFerrett and install it to your PC. The
system requirements are 200 Mhz or higher processor, 64MB or higher
RAM, Windows 95 or higher, minimum 5MB available disk space, and 56KBps
connection speed. Statistically Adjusted 2000 Census Data Released In November 2002, a federal courts appeal ordered the release of statistically adjusted data from the 2000 U.S. census. The U.S. Census Bureau had previously recommended against the release, citing analyses of the adjusted census data that showed it was “severely flawed.” The Supreme Court had also ruled that the adjusted census data cannot be used for appropriating Congressional seats. However, Oregon state senators Susan Castillo and Margaret Carter, both Democrats, filed a lawsuit based on a Freedom of Information Act request, wanting the data available for consideration in issues of state and local redistricting. The Washington Post on November 23, 2002 summarized the political background, “The battle over whether adjusted numbers or figures from the door-to-door count are more accurate has inflamed political passions for decades. Democrats and civil rights groups say adjusted numbers include minorities and poor people who were missed, but Republicans contend they add made-up people for the benefit of Democrats.” The statistically adjusted census data include at least 3.3 million people who did not show up in the door-to-door numbers. The Census Bureau, while forced to release the statistically adjusted census figures, did so with an extensive disclaimer. The Department of Commerce assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of the adjusted data, will provide no assistance in interpreting the numbers, and recommends that they not be used. The adjusted census data is available for downloading at http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/da/Adjusted/adjust_web.html. Web Investigator for NLSY79 and NLSY97 The National Longitudinal Surveys staff has created a web version of the NLS Investigator software for NLSY79 and NLSY97 to allow researchers to search the data files and view codebook pages directly online. Users can mark variables for which they want to obtain the actual data and submit the extract to the server. They will be notified by email when the extracts are ready to be downloaded. Please note the other cohorts are not available with this interface yet. The online extracting tool for NLSY79 is at The American Educational Research Association (AERA) Grants Program provides funding for quantitative education policy and practice research using large-scale, national representative data sets such as National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS). Faculty at institutions of higher education, postdoctoral researchers, and other doctoral-level researchers may apply for these grants. Among the available grants are: AERA Fellows, Research Fellows, AERA Postdoctoral Fellows, Research Grants, and Dissertation Grants. Proposals for Research and Dissertation Grants and AERA and Research Fellowships will be reviewed three times a year, in fall, winter and spring. For more information, the AERA grants web site is at http://www.aera.net/grantsprogram/. Eric Grodsky, formerly a regular DPLS user, was a 2-year AERA Dissertation Grant recipient. Eric is now an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. Internet CornerBelize Central Statistical Office The Belize Central Statistical Office offers a Belize Census 2000 site. The site provides summary reports from the census, as well as the Belize Family Health Survey. Users may also download Excel tables of Main Poverty Indicators, Main Labor Force Indicators, Main Literacy Indicators, and more. On the lighter side, try the Belize Census 2000 Song in RealAudio format, along with a helpful sheet of lyrics in English for sing-along purposes. The lyrics highlight both the privacy and representation aspects of the Belize Census: “The Census it is important to get all the facts / For proper planning give them all the stats / No need to worry ‘cause the things you say / Will be kept in secret--not to give away.” For further fun, you can also print out a crossword puzzle and “jumble” puzzle of Belize census terminology. The Belize Central Statistical Office is available at http://www.cso.gov.bz/welcome.html. Development Report Card of the States
The National Environmental Data Index The National Environmental Data Index offers a guide to environmental data across a number of U.S. government agencies. Users may perform a full-text search across nu-merous agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the Department of Interior, and many more. To search successfully, users must specify which sub-agencies to search (e.g., the Department of Interior has checkboxes for two agencies underneath it: the U.S. Geological Survey and the Biological Resources Division). Users can choose to search information, text, and publications, regulation/legislation, and/or metadata. A more exact field search is also included on the site. The National Environmental Data Index is available at http://www.nedi.org/. The World in Figures web site, based in Hungary, represents an ambitious collaboration to provide free statistics online, “about all countries” and “from different fields of life.” A Java-based data browser allows selection of categories, countries and years, plus a text search. Available years and countries vary considerably among categories, but future updates may help alleviate this. Data source publications are not necessarily mentioned by name; source organizations are identified after the fact by clicking on the results table. While the results table does not lend itself to printing or saving, charts (bar, pie, or line) can be saved as gifs. Whether the World in Figures site, at http://worldinfigures.org/,
can eventually live up to its ambitions remains to be seen.
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Data
permanence is a familiar problem, as anyone with survey results stored
on old IBM punch-cards can attest. Bringing the data forward to new
media and formats takes work and care. The political side of data permanence,
however, has been swirling intensely, most notably since September 11,
2001. Political winds, as surely as the march of time, can blow data
away.
The
new DataFerrett is a data browser for the DataWeb, which brings together
under one umbrella demographic, economic, environmental, health, and
other datasets that are usually separated by geography and/or organization.
This infrastructure allows data users access to an extensive range of
data-sets in one centralized location, where they can mine extensive
levels of data resolution and content.
For
those interested in “grading” the progress of various states
in the U.S., the Development Report Card of the States is an excellent
resource. There are three primary areas in which states are graded:
Performance, Business Vitality, and Development Capacity, with multiple
sub-categories in each area. Users may look at various “State Report
Cards” to see how states rated in various categories and how they
ranked amongst other states. Users can look at statistics in Excel format
and compare statistics for 2002, 2001, and 2000. The Development Report
Card of the States is available at
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