of entities that most closely represent their geographic area of interest. For examples of how data users can meet their geographic needs, see Table 1-1.
Table 1-1. User Needs and Data Product Choices
| Data User Situations | Data Product Choices | |
|---|---|---|
| A student writing a history term paper needs the current and past population totals for a city. | A good starting point is the 1990 Census of Population and Housing CPH-2 report series, a set of publications that contains tables showing place populations in 1970, 1980, and 1990. The comparable 1970 and 1960 publications provide historical population counts for those incorporated places with 10,000 or more inhabitants, the former by decade from 1900 and the latter by decade from the earliest decennial census when each place existed. | |
| A large manufacturer of consumer goods wants to evaluate its division of the Nation into marketing regions, advertising territories, and areas for conducting sample surveys of existing and potential customers. | The various censuses and sample surveys of the Census Bureau offer a wealth of socioeconomic data. These are available in various product formats: printed reports, magnetic tapes, microfiche, flexible diskettes, CD-ROM, and most recently, electronic bulletin boards. Standard summary statistics from censuses and sample surveys, plus estimates of population and income, are available for numerous kinds of large-area geographic entities such as regions, divisions, States, metropolitan areas, large cities, and counties. In addition to the standard data products, there are public-use microdata files that contain the full range of population and housing information from the 1990 census; these include several independently drawn sample files that feature different configurations of large-area geographic entities. | |
| A religious organization is planning to expand its activities by establishing several new congregations throughout a metropolitan area. It needs socioeconomic profiles for a network of small areas within several counties. It also would like to combine these statistics with local sources of information. | Census tracts, and BNAs, are the most versatile units of small-area decennial census geography because they define small, relatively permanent areas designed to be homogeneous when originally established and because they average around 4,000 residents. The CPH-3 report series is a set of publications that contains many tables of demographic, social, economic, and housing statistics from the 1990 Census of Population and Housing. These publications provide an inexpensive, convenient source for small-area information throughout the United States. Moreover, during the intercensal period, local agencies often use census tracts as a geographic framework for aggregating and presenting their own small-area statistical compilations, such as housing starts and population growth estimates. |
Census Bureau Geography1-3
