Return to Index of Data and Maps The basic demographic information on this web site is sourced from the 2000 Census. If you need more recent data, you can use the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey tool which has more recent information; however it is not as accurate as the decennial Census.
In many, if not most, cases, the ACS data have margins of error that are similar to those of the 2000 Census data. Checking whether this is so requires comparing the variability of the ACS and Census data using either the standard error for quantitatively similar data or the coefficient of variation (CV), which allows comparisons of the variability of even extremely diverse data sets.
The Missouri Census Data Center has a concise general description and instructions for using the American Community Survey data.
The use of time series or cross-sectional data from the ACS, because of the variability of data collection schedules and base populations sampled, requires the calculation of the statistical significance of differences.
The State Data Center/Business Industry Data Center Network has an Excel worksheet for computing standard errors and statistical significance for the ACS data.
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