Selected items only:

Changes to the ACS sampling strategy:  The sampling strata will expand from 7 strata to 16 strata, and there are 6 different non-response (aka field) follow-up rates.  Most of this has to do with areas with small tract populations, i.e. less than 2,000 persons per census tract, and in remote Alaska, and areas with 10+% of population with American Indian and nataive Hawaiian.  To be specific, to improve the comparability in the MOE and C.V. (Coefficient of variation) across all census tracts, areas with low population are being increased and areas with high population are being decreased.  That is, highly urban areas are LOSING sample.   For the field follow-up rates, Remote Alaska and AmInd/Hawaiian area (10+%) will have 100% follow-up, and the other areas will have 1:2; 2:5; and 1:3 follow-up rates.

Changes to the 2013 ACS Questionnaire-- 

   1 . new questions on computer usage and access to internet.   I asked how smartphones would be handled, and Mike Burns (CB Regional Office) said he would follow-up.

  2.  Changes to questions on Veterans status and period of military service.

  3.  Changes to the CAPI (and soon CASI) questions on income sources.  Instead of all the different sources on one page, parse over multiple screens.  Does not affect PAPER version of the ACS questionnaire that respondents get in the mail.

Geography issues:

   The new PUMAs will be included in the Fall 2012 version of TIGER.

   2010 Census Summary File 1 with Urbanized Area and Urban Cluster tabulations is expected in October 2012.

Changes to American FactFinder 2. 

The Census Bureau is making lots of changes to AFF2 and trying to address the multitudes of feedback from all parties.  Some of the changes include:

1.  Geographic selection will allow for “legacy” AFF approach OR the new AFF2 approach.  This will be called “geographic assistant”

2. A “Quick facts” button will be on the main AFF2 page.

3. A link to the ftp download area will be on the main AFF2 page.

4. They are working to improve the geographic ids  between the file download from AFF2 and TIGER files, to make it easier to import into GIS.

5. In the current version of AFF2, you can now use “*” as “wildcard” in the search box.  For example, if you type “B08*” it will pull all the “journey to work” tables from ACS.

6. They are working on a smartphone app which they hope will be available within a year. 

Tom Kimpel from the Washington State Office of Financial Management discussed AFF Deep Links, and showed how they have used it on their website. http://www.ofm.wa.gov/pop/acs/default.asp    Basically,  how to construct the weblink by using 4 parameters:

   Program

   Dataset

   Product

   Geographic identifier—concatenation of sumrylvl|geocomponent|geographic variant|FIPS

        Note:  geographic variant is a 2 digit code for things like Cong District, Legislative District, MSA, urban area

By combining these parameters, a hyperlink can be created to go to a specific AFF page, this is FASTER and easier than trying to explain to someone how to use AFF2!    

Tom highly recommended using the Census Bureau’s AFF Deep Linking Guide.    April 2012 version, now available:

http://factfinder2.census.gov/legacy/AFF_deep_linking_guide.pdf

I think we need to schedule a webinar on  AFF2 deeplinking and another one on Data Ferrett HotReports. 

Elaine Murakami

FHWA Office of Planning

206-220-4460 (in Seattle)