Definition of Commands and Terminology
This section will review all of the pulldown command options from the CensusCD+Maps screen including:
File: Allows you to establish a directory or path for naming and saving your output files. It controls where reports will be written and allows you to retrieve previous request parameters (i.e. the geographic and demographic selections).
- New Request: Used to start a new series of reports and controls the path/name of subsequent reports - if you don't use this function all reports and files will be given the default title of "Noname.*"
- Open Request: Opens existing, saved requests.
- Save Request: Saves current request parameters.
- Save Request As: Used to start a new series of reports.
- Exit: Exits or quits the program.
Area: Determines your overall area of interest.
Geographic Area: Place to choose from any of the census' 16 geographic levels included on the CD.
For example selecting MCD gives you the following selection screen.
- Neighborhood: Input a zip code and street address to get demographics for the corresponding census block group. This translation of one type of geographic reference point (an address) into another type or level of reference point (a block group) is often referred to as geocoding. The neighborhood selection screen also has a function to search for street segments within each zip code.
Radius: Creates a circular area or creates a circular area around a circle (called a doughnut area) for any number of miles around any of the following points:
Latitude/Longitude: Exact coordinates are matched to the center points of surrounding areas for any level of geography
Zip Centroid: Enter a zip code and any number of miles, CensusCD+Maps creates a radius from center point of zip code.
Place Centroid: Creates a circular report area around center of any named area by first selecting the area and then setting the radius.
Address Geocode: Enter a street address and zip code
The Subarea menu determines how data in a report will be broken out geographically.
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Summarize: Reports demographic data for the selected Area as one set of numbers, gives complete variable names/descriptions , very useful for getting total numbers of a unique area (such as several states that don't border one another or multiple counties within different states, etc., a great way to see totals for a unique user-defined territory).
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Smaller Areas: Breaks demographic data down into any valid smaller geographic units for the chosen Area. Choices in this submenu will be automatically limited and determined by the Area selection. Selecting smaller areas is a required step for most reports. If you wanted to see the results for several counties you would have selected them under the first step, Geographic Area, and then select a Smaller Area of County (or Block Group, or Tract, or MCD, etc.) depending on how you want the results broken down.
The Counts menu is where demographic data (also referred to as variables or Counts) is selected. Selections can be made individually or as part of a report.
Standard: Pre-formatted reports with demographic data already selected based on 37 categories such as Income, Housing, Families, Race, 1997 Estimate/2002 Projections, 97/02 Consumer Spending, County Time Series(TS) Agriculture, County TS Crime, County TS Banking, County TS Building, County TS Government Spending, County TS Industry, County TS Retail, County Population 1790 - 1990, and All 1990 Census Counts.
Tailored: Selection of individual demographic data items or Counts for the chosen Area/Smaller Areas. Allows for up to 240 specific selections in any one report. Data variables are organized into 18 groups or categories each of which has one or more tables of data. A selection screen appears after a menu choice is made.
Tailored Count Selection screen appears after a Group is selected. Buttons/icons along left edge show groups. The Upper selection window shows tables available for selected group(s). The lower left selection window displays the individual variables available for the selected/highlighted table. The lower right hand window indicates any of the individual variables which have been selected/highlighted and which will be included in report or map. Search and Help functions can be accessed from icons on the right hand side. If Sorting Option (see Options menu below) is active, select variable for sorting by highlighting one of the Selected Counts in the lower right hand selection window.
Search: Search for Areas or (i.e. geographic place names) Counts (demographic variable names and descriptions) based on any words or character string.
Options: Allows customization of the formatting of data reports to include sorting and area keys and controls creation of special reports.
Counts Short Name option: The counts short names can be either census or descriptive. The census short name is eight characters long (as been defined and assigned by the Census Bureau for 1990 & County TS data). The descriptive short name was defined by CensusCD and is meant to describe the count, as much as possible, in eight characters.
The options to Produce Counts description report and Footnote Report will automatically generate these descriptive reports which detail the demographic data chosen to create reports and maps. When activated, these reports can be opened through the View menu after report/map has been created. Footnote reports only apply to County Time Series data.
The following options can only be selected if the Subarea is Smaller Areas:
- Sort: Allows you to rank order a selected count in either ascending or descending order. Descending order will, be the default. You must tag the count you want to sort on in the selected counts window of the Standard, or the Tailored counts screen. Once a count is selected it will appear under your select counts window.
- Area Name: Selection places an area name description on each line of the report produced. For example, if the area selected is Nation, and the smaller subareas selected is County, then each line of the report will contain the County name in the Area Name column. Area Name is selected by default. >
- Area Key: Places a geographic key for each smaller area, on each line of output. For example, a Zip-code or FIPS code. The area key allows the linking of information in each smaller area to outside data such as the geographic boundaries found in mapping software. You would use this with other software.
- Area Latitude/Longitude: Will place a center point coordinate (centroid) for each smaller area on each line of output. The smaller area centroid will allow mapping software to display information for each smaller area without needing to have boundaries for that smaller area geography.
- Radius Bearing : Can be selected whenever a radial area is broken out by smaller subareas. The Radius Bearing is a field containing the Distance and direction (bearing) of each smaller area from the Radius center.
- Zero Fill Zip Areas: The Zip code data in CensusCD+Maps was released by the U.S.Census Bureau in 1992. The Zip code boundaries in CensusCD+Maps are from 1996. Zero Fill Zip Areas accounts for some of the differences between 1992 and 1996 zip codes, by creating zero filled records for the new zip codes since 1992. The mapping software will display holes for zip codes that it does not have demographic data for. Zero Fill Zip Areas will allow the mapping software to fill those areas.
Run: The last step in creating a new report. Allows you to create reports as a List (i.e. formatted text), Dbase file, or ASCII (comma or tab delimited, with or without headers), default to a Snapshot Report (predetermined set of demographics), or generate a map.
Snapshot: Pre-selected sets of demographic data which will be generated in a specially formatted report. Requires only the selection of an Area. The Historical Census and County Time Series are only available when Area/Smaller Area are either State or County.
View: Opens previously created maps or reports.
