Census Bureau field names are concatenation of the ACS base table ID + the line or item within the table.

Labels for the field names can be found in the Census provided SAS programming, as Nancy G suggests.

Or maybe more accessible – if you are not a SAS user – is the lookup table of all ACS data elements.  Find this at:

· For ACS 2008-10… http://www2.census.gov/acs2010_3yr/summaryfile/Sequence_Number_and_Table_Number_Lookup.xls

· For ACS 2005-09… http://www2.census.gov/acs2009_5yr/summaryfile/Sequence_Number_and_Table_Number_Lookup.xls

· Prior vintages (2008 and earlier) have same lookup, but the file had a different name: “merge_5_6.XLS”  See http://www2.census.gov/acs2008_3yr/summaryfile/merge_5_6.xls

If you want “intuitive” names, then you can develop a process or script to rename field (or calculate fields) with names to your liking (or custom calculations).

I just finished, this morning, assembling the 150 pieces of the new ACS 3-year data. Always a joy.

________________________

Todd Graham
Principal Forecaster and Project Manager
Metropolitan Council
390 Robert Street North
Saint Paul, MN 55101

ph:  651/602-1322
email:  todd.graham@metc.state.mn.us
in:  www.linkedin.com/in/toddgraham
web:  http://www.metrocouncil.org/data/
________________________

From: Gemignani, Nancy
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 11:03 AM
To: ctpp-news@chrispy.net
Subject: RE: [CTPP] does anyone have a link to the field names in the 2005-2009 ACS file?

You can find the labels for every cell in the ACS Summary File in the Census Bureau’s ACS FTP site.  They provide SAS input statements and labels in their UserTools folder - ftp://ftp2.census.gov/acs2009_5yr/summaryfile/UserTools/   The file is called SF20095YR_SAS.zip

Even if you do not have SAS, you can just change the file extension to “txt” and open it in Excel.  Remove everything but the labels then A simple ‘text-to-columns’ procedure in Excel and you will have a “look-up” table with the label in one column and the label in the next.

Hope this helps.

Nancy Gemignani

California State Census Data Center

Demographic Research Unit

(916) 327-0103 ext 2550

From: ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Nancy Reger
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 8:44 AM
To: ctpp-news@chrispy.net
Subject: [CTPP] does anyone have a link to the field names in the 2005-2009 ACS file?

I’m trying to find a way to replace the field headers, B0010001 for example, with a more descriptive title. Does anyone have a way of doing this? I can’t find the data dictionary for the ACS – does anyone have a link?

Nancy Reger, AICP

Deputy Director, Transportation

MORPC

111 Liberty St. Ste. 100

Columbus, Ohio 43215

nreger@morpc.org

614-233-4154