My slides for a class on government information resources for undergraduate students in the Urban Public program at Hunter College.

1. +
Government Information Resources for
Community Health Planning in NYC
John Pell
Assistant Professor
Hunter College Libraries

2. +
How to Follow Along
Go to
http://libguides.library.hunter.cuny.edu
/comhe411 (also can be found in the
“research guides”) you can find the slides
and links to the resources we are
discussing

3. +
Overview
 The Big Picture
 Sourcesof Information on Population and Housing
Characteristics + Demo!
 Sources of Information on Health Characteristics +
Demo!
 Sources of Information on Education and Public
Safety
 Data Aggregators
and Geographic Information
Services + Demo!

4. +
The Big Picture
Why learn about information retrieval systems?

5. +
Information Literacy
 The ACRL identifies a information literate person as
one who…
 Knows how information is formally and informally
produced, organized, and disseminated.
 Investigates the scope, content, and organization of
information retrieval systems.
 Identifies a variety of types and formats of potential sources
for information.
 Realizes that information may need to be constructed with
raw data from primary sources.
 (Among other things)
“Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education”(2000)
http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency.

6. +
Important things to know about
survey data:
Small data values are protected in
order to avoid revealing the identities of
individuals.
Your geography of interest may not be
represented in existing surveys.
Data Aggregators may not present the
most current raw data.

7. +
Discussion Activity
 Form groups that will address one of these topics:
 Sources of Information on Population and Housing
Characteristics
 Sources of Information on Health Characteristics
 Sources of Information on Education and Public Safety
 Data Aggregators and Geographic Information Services

8. +
Discussion Activity
 For your group’s topic:
 What are some examples of categories within
that topic? Why are these categories
important?
 For example, one category of “Population Characteristics” might be
“country of origin.”
 Try to come up with at least one organization that
measures or produces this type of information.
 Try to come up with one online or print resource
that we can use to look up this type of information.

9. + Population and Housing
Characteristics
U.S. Census and American Community Survey

10. +
Population and Housing
Characteristics
 U.S. Census Bureau
 American Fact Finder
 American Community Survey
 U.S. Census

11. +
Different Surveys, Different Content!
 2000 Census
 2010 Census
 American Community Survey

12. +
What’s in the 2000 Census?
Social Characteristics Employment Characteristics
 Marital status  Labor force status
 Place of birth, citizenship, and year of  Place of work and journey
entry
 School enrollment and educational  to work
attainment
 Occupation, industry, and
 Ancestry
 Class of worker
 Residence 5 years ago (migration)
 Language spoken at home and ability to  Work status in 1999
speak English
 Income in 1999
 Veteran status
 Disability
 Grandparents as caregivers

13. +
What’s in the 2000 Census?
Physical Housing Characteristics Financial Characteristics
 · Units in structure  · Value of home or monthly
 · Year structure built  rent paid
 · Number of rooms and
 · Utilities, mortgage, taxes,
 number of bedrooms
 insurance, and fuel costs
 · Year moved into residence
 · Plumbing and kitchen
 facilities
 · Telephone service
 · Vehicles available
 · Heating fuel
 · Farm residence

14. +
What’s in the 2010 Census?
 Age
 Hispanic or Latino origin
 Household relationship
 Race
 Sex
 Tenure (whether the home is owned or rented)
 Vacancy characteristics

15. +
American Community Survey?
 The ACS collects and produces population and housing
information every year instead of every ten years.
 Releases 1, 3, and 5 year estimates
 1 year estimates cover populations of +65,000
 3 year estimates cover populations of +20,000
 5 years estimates cover populations of almost any size.
 Further refines categories of the 2000 census
 More about what’s in the ACS:
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Downloads/data_documentati
on/SubjectDefinitions/2010_ACSSubjectDefinitions.pdf

16. +
American Fact Finder
You may build a query by selecting
various topics, geographies, and
population characteristics.
You also have the option of working
from specific data sources.

17. +
American Fact Finder
FactFinder helps you to build a query
with expandable lists that drill down to
increasingly specific topics.

18. +
American Fact Finder
As you develop your query, the topics
that you select will appear here.
Once you have selected the
topics, populations, and geographies
you are interested in, you can try to
produce a table.

19. +
American Fact Finder
You can download
Opening “table tools”
your table as a
allows you to collapse,
PDF, Excel, or plain
expand, and rearrange
text file ( you may also
sections of your table
print or permalink it.)
NOTE: “Map View” is
currently not supported
for all geographies.

20. +
Health Characteristics
EpiQuery

21. +
Health Characteristics
 New York City Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene
 Epiquery
 Community Health Survey
 Communicable Disease Surveillance System
 NYC Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
 Youth Risk Behavior Survey
 Vital Statistics

22. +
What’s in Epiquery?
 New York City Community Health Survey (CHS)
 A telephone survey based upon the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s National Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System
(BRFSS), that is conducted annually by the DOHMH, Division of
Epidemiology, Bureau of Epidemiology Services. CHS provides data
on the health of New Yorkers.
 Communicable Disease Surveillance System
 Data are derived from reports filed with the New York City
Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) as required by
Section 11.03 of the N ew York City Health Code. Reported
cases, crude rates and age-adjusted rates (per 100,000 population)
are available by select demographic (age group, sex) and
geographic (borough, neighborhood) characteristics.

23. +
What’s in EpiQuery?
 New York City Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
 The New York City Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NYC HANES) is a
community-based health survey conducted by the New York City Department of
Health and Mental Hygiene. Data was collected from June through December
2004. NYC HANES measured key health indicators in a sample of 1,999
randomly selected NYC adult residents through a detailed health interview and
brief physical exam.
 NYC Youth Risk Behavior Survey
 Conducted in odd-numbered years since 1997 to monitor priority health risk
behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of mortality, morbidity, and social
problems among youth in New York City. Students complete a self-
administered, anonymous questionnaire that measures a variety of
behaviors, including tobacco, alcohol and drug use, unintentional injury and
violence, sexual behaviors, dietary behaviors, and physical activity.
 The NYC YRBS can provide prevalence data for the city as a whole, for each of
the five boroughs starting in 2003, and (since 2005) for three high-risk
neighborhoods - the South Bronx, North and Central Brooklyn, and East and
Central Harlem in Manhattan - where the DOHMH has its District Public Health
Offices.

24. +
What’s in EpiQuery?
 Vital Statistics
 Statistics for overall mortality, mortality by cause and the top 10
leading causes of death and birth statistics by year since 2000 are
now available on EpiQuery, as well as death trends since 1994.
Some data have been censored to ensure data security and
confidentiality. As a result, the user may find slight differences
among vital statistics presented in EpiQuery, data presented in the
annual Summary of Vital Statistics, and data obtained directly from
the Office of Vital Statistics.

25. +
EpiQuery
Begin by selecting the data collection
you want to work with: Community
Health Survey, STD or Disease
Surveillance, Risk Behavior
Survey, Nutrition Survey, or Vital
Statistics

26. +
EpiQuery
The layout and features of
EpiQuery depend on the dataset
that you are using, but it generally
starts with basic options and helps
you build more specific queries.

27. +
Education and Public Saftey
NYC Department of Education and NYC Police Department

28. +
Education and Public Safety
 NYC Police Department
 Weekly Crime Statistics
 http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/crime_prevention/crime_statisti
cs.shtml
 Historical Crime Statistics
 http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/analysis_and_planning/historic
al_nyc_crime_data.shtml
 NYC Department of Education
 Graduation Results
 Test Results
 NYC School Survey of Parents, Teachers, and Students

29. +
GIS and Data Aggregation
NYCity Map and InfoShare

30. +
Data Aggregators
 NYCityMap
 InfoShare

31. +
NYCityMap

32. +
NYCityMap
By selecting “Show additional
data on map,” it is possible to
display various municipal
boundaries, such as census
tracts.

33. +
InfoShare
 Provides data for “NYC Neighborhood” geographic units
 http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/neighbor/neighbor.pdf
 (map with approximate neighborhood locations)
 http://www.infoshare.org/misc/NYCNeighborhoods.pdf
 (InfoShare’s map of neighborhood boundries)
 Uses overlap factors to estimate statistics for geographies of
interest when surveys for the area are not available.
 Provides Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative
System (SPARCS) Hospitalization Data.
 Provides Area Profiles and allows the construction of specific
tables.

34. +
In-Class Exercise
 Fill out your Health Ecology Worksheet for your assigned
Community, I am here to help!