Data collection

Identifying variables

How were variables identified? Overall goals were to update variables previously included in the map and expand the visualized variables for health, child care, and education. Variables for neighborhoods were identified based on:

1. For the neighborhood variables, consistency with variables used in the 2012 DC Kids Count, except we chose to replace the average median family income variable with the percentage of residents under 200% of poverty and the percentage of residents below the DC media income because we assessed that averaging the block group averages to create a neighborhood level median income was not a reliable/valid method.
2. For child care variables, data was obtained from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and variables were based upon what was available (enrollment, capacity, subsidies) that intersected with DC Action's advocacy and data frame.
3. For school variables, most data were obtained from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and variables were based upon what was used last year (DC-CAS), what represented performance (DC-CAS), and what represented access (Enrollment, Facilities data). 4) For health variables, data were gathered from the Department of Health Care Finance and Department of Health, and variables were based on feedback from DC KIDS COUNT advisory board members on how to expand mappable health indicators.
   How were the variable codes identified?

Census API

How was the Census queried to collect this data? Where was it stored and should this be centralized on a D.C. Action computer or resource (i.e. Dropbox or GitHub)

Other questions

What are the system requirements for a machine necessary to pull off our data tasks?