ACS Data Users Group

We are trying to determine if table C16002 about limited English speaking households is available at the tract level from the 2014-18 ACS. A search of data.census.gov doesn't turn up anything but the site also does not load, at least for us, tract level versions of the table from the 2017 five year ACS that are available through Factfinder.

Is there a way to look up the levels of geography at which each 2018 five year ACS table is available?

This is available. I had to use Opera to get it to work. The site hasn't been working very well for me in Chrome.

Hello Cliff, see if this link works for you:

https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?text=C16002&hidePreview=true&tid=ACSDT5Y2018.C16002&g=0400000US25.140000&tp=true

I had to go into the Advanced search, type in the table ID and then hit Search. Click on "View All Tables (1)" in the results, then click "Customize Table" on the next screen.

There will be a drop-down menu labeled "Product" where you can select "2018:ACS 5-year estimates Detailed Tables". Now, click on the "Geography" icon & toggle on "Show Summary Levels". Scroll down to select 140 - Tract, then select your state, and then click the box for "All Census tracts within <state>". Then transpose the table to list your tracts as the rows instead of the columns.

When you download the file, it will include a column with the Geoids, tract name, and whatever data you selected for inclusion. (Ests and/or MOEs.)

Hope that helps!

Catherine

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Data Analyst

Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission

Pittsburgh, PA

Thanks Catherine. That does indeed work and a coworker figured it out too.

I decided to try again just now and still could not get to this table by going through the Advanced Search. After clearing all my search terms, after a second try the site informed me that there are no tables about language available at all, regardless of year or level of geography! Next, I cleared my browser cookies for data.census.gov and, following the same sequence of steps, was able to finally find the table. It seems that if you start with the table number then customize from there you have better luck. This, of course, assumes that you know which table you want. Or perhaps it was clearing the cookies that did the trick, though this is hardly a step I'd expect a casual user to know to take. I hope someone at the CB is reading this.

to your question about a way to look up the levels of geog for 2018 ACS tables - You can use the Appendices file found on the ACS documentation page here:
www.census.gov/.../summary-file-documentation.html

Appendix A gives the geography restrictions by table number.

JamiRae

Thank you for your help!

Hi Cliff,

I am glad that Catherine and JamiRae were able to assist you. If a similar issue arises when I'm accessing data.census.gov through Chrome, a quick trick that usually works for me is pressing the following 3 keys: "Shift+Ctrl+R" to force a hard reload of the page, thus bypassing the cache. If the issue continues, then I press "F12" to open Chrome's Developer Tools, then I right click on the browser reload button and choose "Empty Cache and Hard Reload".

For issues with data.census.gov, I encourage you to write us at:

cedsci.feedback@census.gov

The team that receives emails at this address is also the team behind data.census.gov. They monitor feedback daily and work to solve any issues you experience. I have also consolidated the issues you've listed here to this team internally.

Best,
Caleb

Caleb

Thanks for the browser suggestions.

I do think there was some sort of interaction between the browser and data.census.gov that was at the root of my problem yesterday. Another symptom is that I was returned a search saying there were 27 tables that met my criteria (census tract, 5 year ACS detailed tables, language topic) but was only able to view the first 12 or so. When I clicked on "see more" nothing new would appear. This morning the behavior of the site was different, normal and as expected. I'll send more details to CEDSCI.