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Social Welfare 251: Community Needs and Capacities Assessment: Home

Finding Data for Program Development

Quantitative and qualitative data about communities can help determine community needs, and address some of the requirements of this assignment including:

  • Where does the problem occur (e.g., geographic boundaries and location)?
  • How many people are impacted by the problem?
  • Who is affected (e.g., the target population and its scope)?

Policy Map

PolicyMap is a (relatively!) easy-to-use mapping program that includes over 15,000 US demographic and socioeconomic data indicators from the neighborhood census block to national levels. Data about demographics and neighborhood conditions can be presented as maps, tables, charts and reports. It also lets you add specific points -- such as homeless service providers - -to the map that you create. It's also a  great way to find the census tract number for any location.

Neighborhood Data

The American Community Survey (ACS) via Data.Census.gov is the only nation-wide source for current poverty related data at the very local level (census tract), including housing, employment, disability, language spoken at home, citizenship and immigration, educational attainment and school enrollment. More information on working with Census and poverty data at Poverty Related Data.

PLACES: Local Data for Better Health  from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allows counties, places, and local health departments regardless of population size and urban-rural status to better understand the burden and geographic distribution of health-related outcomes in their jurisdictions and assist them in planning public health interventions.

Mapping Spatial Inequality: Legal and health services in the 9-county Bay Area and includes crucial information on available language support, financial support, service restrictions, etc. From the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI)

More Resources for Finding Social Data

Subject Guide

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Susan Edwards
Contact:
Social Research Library
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

510-643-6224