Community Assessment - Getting Started
For the community assessment assignment, you will need to find various types of sources:
- SOWK 536 Fall 2020Overview of library services and resources for SOWK 536
- Community Assessment WorksheetProvides guidelines and chart to help you structure and conceptualize your community assessment assignment (536 Assignment 1).
Community Structures
TIP: Use official state, county and city web sites for information about your community, like government structure, elected officials, neighborhood councils, religious leaders, and community activists and advocates. Go to a search engine (like Google or Bing) and type in your state or city and the word government. For example, Los Angeles government. This will bring up the official website on top of the results list.
Sort your Google results by adding site:.gov; .org to the end of your Google search to find government or organization websites.
Example: pasadena neighborhood council site:.gov
U.S. Census Bureau Tutorials
The tutorials above are part of the U.S. Census Bureau's Data Gems, that will introduce you to various concepts and techniques to improve your ability to navigate the website and use data-access tools.
Finding Community Demographics
- U.S. Census Bureau DataThe Census Bureau is the leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy. You have two options to start your search on the landing page of data.census.gov: a free-form single search bar or an advanced search filtering experience.
- Census Data TutorialsThese tutorials are from the U.S. Census Bureau and will help with navigating the new database.
- Homelessness DataThese raw data sets contain Point-in-Time (PIT) estimates and national PIT estimates of homelessness as well as national estimates of homelessness by state and estimates of chronic homelessness from 2007 - 2019
- Pew Research CenterPew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world.
- SimplyAnalytics This link opens in a new windowA web-based mapping, analytics, and data visualization application with 100,000+ data variables, including: demographic data from the US Census and American Community Survey (ACS), consumer spending data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), and D&B's Points-of-Interest business file providing access to over 5 million US business profiles. Includes MRI-SimmonsLOCAL consumer behavior dataset, which includes data on over 8,000 brands, 450 categories, and the MOSAIC consumer lifestyle segmentation system. Data is available down to the Census Block Group level.
- Social Explorer This link opens in a new windowVisually display demographic data in the U.S. from 1790-present at a variety of geographic levels. Create reports, maps and animations that can be downloaded.
View the videos below for more info on how to use social explorer.