ACS Data Users Group

I am doing a research project that is looking into which areas are unserved or underserved based on the FCC guidelines. The problem I have been encountering with several cites is that the data given is not transparent. States are not giving data the same way so it is not reliable. I am wondering if there is a way for me to:

1) use the data collected from the survey that asked about internet access to show me who has what type and where.

2) find out how many people were surveyed in just alabama.

3) from my understanding, the ACS tries not to survey the same people in a 5 year block period, so from that could I over lay the data collected from the last 5 years to get a better understanding of the access in Alabama?

I apologize if these questions are all over the place.

I am very knew to the data world and would welcome any feedback. Or even schedule a meeting to discuss these things.

1. This table, B28002, has the type of internet service provided. Check out the table to see what information is there - I think that is what you are looking for:

To figure out where, it depends on the level of geography you need. the lowest level of geography for this table is by Block Group - from data.census.gov (you will need to get the data by county or use some other website to get the data like NHGIS.org). I have also attached an Excel file of the appendices that includes the table structure/layout for all tables in the 2014-2018 ACS.

2. Check out the technical documentation on the ACS website You can get the sample size here:

I suggest you also review the questionnaires for the years of estimates you are getting data for so you know what is available. If they didn't ask the question, obviously there won't be data available.

3. What you want is the 5-year estimates. This data set uses the survey responses over the given 5-year period (i.e. 2014-2018) to create the estimate data. Get more info on that here:

acsdatacommunity.prb.org/.../7028.ACS_5F00_2018_5F00_SF_5F00_5YR_5F00_Appendices.zip

Sorry, I think the zipfile was empty and the upload limit here is 64k.

So you can get the Excel file with the Appendices here:

http://gisdiva.com/downloads/acs2018-5yr/