CTPP April 2025

ctpp@listserv.transportation.org

2 participants
4 discussions

NPR articles on Census Bureau staffing; and citizenship on 2030 Census

by Charles Purvis

The reporter Hansi Lo Wang is now with National Public Radio (NPR). Here are two of Hansi’s most recent contributions. Important for census data users!! Chuck https://www.npr.org/2025/04/17/nx-s1-5349435/us-census-bureau-data-decennia… Brain drain at Census Bureau has employees warning about the country's statistics npr.org https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5338905/census-citizenship-question-tr… A new study quantifies how a citizenship question would likely hurt census accuracy npr.org

5 months, 3 weeks

Princeton paper on "The Multiracial Compilation: The 2020 Census and the Fictitious Multiracial Boom"

by Charles Purvis

IPUMS (eh-pums) announced their IPUMA Annual Research Awards Winners. Of interest is a published report by the Princeton University Sociologists Paul Starr and Christina Pao: “The Multiracial Complication: The 2020 Census and the Fictitious Multiracial Boom” https://spia.princeton.edu/news/research-record-multiracial-complication-20… Research Record: The Multiracial Complication: The 2020 Census and the Fictitious Multiracial Boom | Princeton School of Public and International Affairs spia.princeton.edu I just started reading it. Quite interesting. Chuck Purvis Hayward, California

5 months, 4 weeks

2025 ACS Data Users Conference Update

by Ed Christopher

This may be of interest to some on this list. https://acsdatacommunity.prb.org/ -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: 2025 ACS Data Users Conference Update Date: 9 Apr 2025 16:40:00 +0000 From: American Community Survey Data Users Group <noreply(a)prb.org> To: Ed Christopher <edc(a)berwyned.com> [Population Reference Bureau] Update from American Community Survey Data Users Group <https://acsdatacommunity.prb.org/> *2025 ACS Data Users Conference Update* The 2025 ACS Data Users Conference will be a one-day conference—held virtually—on May 29, 2025 from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm ET. Stay tuned for a detailed program and registration information coming later this month! The conference will bring together ACS data users and U.S. Census Bureau staff to share information about key ACS data issues and applications. The conference will include: * Contributed presentations by ACS data users * Invited plenary panels * Breakout sessions * Lightning sessions Registration for the conference will be *free* for all participants. You were sent this email because an administrator sent it to all users in the Everyone role on American Community Survey Data Users Group.

6 months

CTPP Data Portal

by Charles Purvis

Just a few initial comments on the new CTPP Data Portal (https://ctppdata.transportation.org/#/index) It works. It’s very well organized for a sequential choice of: dataset (2017-2021); part (1, 2 or 3); Universe (probably okay to skip this); and geographic summary levels. Then proceed with step 1 to choose one (only one) table, then step 2: choose your geography, then, step 3: retrieve your data. Well, if you ask for too much data, say, tract-to-tract within your mega-region, the software will say “please reduce the geography selection and try again or use CTPP Data API to download the data.” If the data request is very small, it will download immediately. If it’s a mid-sized data request (say, county-to-county by means of transportation) the system will send off your request in “batch mode” and then send you an e-mail telling you when your “job is done” …. Kind of like how it worked in the previous generation of the software. Quite simple and effective. I am able to download these csv files fairly routinely from this new AASHTO site. Seems to work perfectly for all small and medium-sized data requests. I have also developed a series of table specific R scripts to “clean up” variable names and variable content. For example, the “+/-“ characters in the MOE variables are a minor nuisance, but can be eliminated by changing “+/-“ to “” in all instances. QED. A lot of this cleanup is using the R packages “dplyr” and “janitor”. My scripts are here: https://github.com/chuckpurvis/r_scripts/tree/ctpp look for my r scripts starting with ctpp1721…. Now, the API. I’ve worked with the Census Bureau’s API for certain summary levels (e.g., “geo-within-geo” - - congressional districts + counties) and the r package jsonlite to convert json frames into regular r-package “data frames”. The Bureau has a TON of examples on how to use the API to create these JSON (Java Script Object Notation) files. I could probably do better with these conversions, but I rely for the most part on the r-package “tidycensus” The “curl” API that’s shown in the CTPP Data Portal API example is total greek to me. I’ve never hard of “curl” and I have no idea how to integrate it in my r scripts. So, we need a TON of examples on how to use the CTPP Data Portal API, as well as examples of how to use the API in R-package and Python scripting. As an alternative to this curl / and long, hard-to-interpret API calls, it would be immensely useful to update the R package “ctppr” to incorporate the new 2017-2021 CTPP data. Immensely useful. Somehow, the older version of the ctppr r-package, by Westat, is no longer working. I’m assuming this is because the API has been totally re-built into a newer system. So, in sum, the CTPP Data Portal works as intended for small and medium-sized data requests. For LARGE data requests (> 30,000 data cells) the software stops to work, and recommends the user to use the API. If the new Data Portal API was “wrapped up” in a R-package wrapper, I’d be pleased. Hope this review is of interest, Chuck Purvis Hayward, California

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CTPP April 2025