Identifying appropriate summary level (150 for block groups via the state-county-tract-blockgroup hierarchy)
Normalizing counts to compute percents (notes about normalizing data)
Mass data are already load into MS-Access for your convenience!
lab5_ma.mdb has all the Census data that you need
Skip from Step 1 to Step 4 in Part IV unless you want to develop your own MS-Access census database from the raw text files
Using MS-Access
Importing raw text files from Census into MS-Access (optional)
Developing Queries involving table joins (using your local copy of lab5_ma.mdb in the census2k folder of the class data locker)
Accessing MS-Access tables from ArcMap
Beware of version control issues: ArcMap does not always read the latest MS-Access database format. This year the versions installed on Lab machines are in sync, but previous versions of ArcMap could not read the 2007 or 2013 versions of MS-Access and needed to use the older Access 2002-03 format (*.mdb rather than *.accdb).
Useful Resources :
Notes and tutorials regarding the use of MS-Access
Chapter 2: How to Use This File - General intro and detailed explanation of geographic summary level.
Chapter 3: Subject Locator -
Index designed to quickly identify the STF3 tables you may need (e.g., "median earnings" is in variable P85). Each
table variable is listed alphabetically.
Chapter 5: List of Tables (Matrices) - Sequential list of tables (e.g., P85) - often easier to find variables here than in Chapter 3 if you use the 'find tool' to search the PDF file of this chapter for keywords. E.g., search for keywords like "Means of
Transportation to Work" and "Persons 16 years and over".
Chapter 7:
Identification Section : Explains data encoding (e.g., state name abreviations)
Table (Matrix)
Section -
Data dictionary for specific STF3 columns (e.g., column P085002 reports "median earnings in 1999 dollars for males 16 years and over with earnings")
2000 Census Variable Locator - cross-reference table showing which census variables are included in each of the 76 data files
E.g., variable P35 is included in the raw data file st00007.uf3 (for Mass, this is MA00007.UF3).
We have imported this raw data file into MS-Access as the table MA00007 within lab5_ma.mdb (in addition to the tables ma00003 and mageo which are described below).