Social Explorer: retrieve demographics about a neighborhood

After you login to Social Explorer, select the "Maps & Tables" tab at the top of the screen, and then select the "Start Here" button on the next page.

Use one of two methods to zoom in to the location you want to study:

(1) Using the zoom tool on the map, draw a box around the area in which you are interested. Keep drawing successive boxes zooming in until you are displaying the desired area on the map. You might need to use the hand tool to adjust the area up/down/left/right.

OR

(2) Use the binoculars/find tool to search for the area in which you are interested.

You can search for a specific street address, city, ZIP, county, or other place of interest.

After you've found a specific location, you might want to hide the marker. You also might need to use the zoom tools to zoom in/out or use the hand tool to adjust the area up/down/left/right to display your desired area.

If you're looking for recent, detailed demographics for neighborhoods, do not choose the 2010 Census because it only collected basic data. Instead use the five-year average for the American Community Survey, e.g., ACS 2006-2010 Census Tract.

NOTE: Although the "ACS 2006-2010 Block Group" selection provides some data for geographic areas smaller than a census tract, it also loses some data items which are suppressed at the block group level.

The topic used for the map doesn't matter for this example. You're just trying to generate a map with light shading so that the labels and the cross-hatching of the selected areas are easy to see, so choose something which is likely to have low percentages, e.g., "Race - % Hispanic: Asian". (See step 9 for the resulting map.)

 In the pop-up window, select "Comprehensive Report" from the choices in the drop-down.

You have MUCH more control about which areas are included when you select by placing specific points on the map.

If you decide to select by drawing a circle around the area, create the circle by starting in the center and dragging out. Please be aware that if the edge of the circle overlaps even the tiniest bit of an adjacent area then that entire area will be included in your selected results.

On the map, click once in each area you're selecting. A small green dot on the map will indicate that an area has been selected.

In the right column select "Make Report" next to the green check mark.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and right click on the map to save or copy the image.

Remember, the topic of the map wasn't important. In step 4, we selected something with low percentages so that the map would be lightly shaded so that we could easily see the cross-hatching and the labels for each area.

Scroll back to the top of the screen and select the link for "tables" to add items.

Notice that the "Comprehensive Report" is not truly comprehensive; it leaves out many of the available tables.

To add more than one table, hold down the [Ctrl] key while selecting tables in the upper section. Click on the [Add] button to add your highlighted tables to your Current Table Selections, then click on the [Show Result] button.

Select the Excel tab.

Download the Excel file.