Webinar Resources: Accessing and Analyzing Census Data Using R
Webinar Descriptions
March 4, 2021, Accessing and Analyzing US Census Data in R: In this workshop, participants will be introduced to the tidycensus R package for working with US Census Bureau data. Tidycensus allows R users to swiftly access custom extracts of decennial Census and American Community Survey data and formats it for analysis with R’s tidyverse suite of packages. Participants will learn the basics of tidycensus; how to summarize and explore Census data with tidyverse tools; and how to create informative Census data visualizations in R. No prior experience with R is required, and analysts new to R are welcomed!
March 11, 2021, Spatial Analysis of US Census Data in R: This workshop will introduce participants to tools for spatial data analysis and GIS in R with applied examples using US Census data. Participants will learn how to perform common GIS tasks in R and make both static and interactive maps with Census data. The workshop will cover R’s sf package for spatial data; the tigris and tidycensus packages for Census geographic data; and mapping with tools like ggplot2, Leaflet , and Mapbox . No prior experience with R’s spatial tools is required for this workshop – the only requirement is a curiosity about maps and spatial data!
March 25, 2021, Analyzing US Census Microdata in R: Social scientists commonly use individual-level microdata from the US Census Bureau to generate detailed cross-tabulations and insights not possible with aggregated data. This workshop is an introduction to analyzing microdata from the American Community Survey in R, focusing on new functionality available in the tidycensus R package. Participants will learn how to download microdata extracts directly from the Census website into R; work appropriately with survey weights to analyze microdata; and fit statistical models with microdata using R’s survey package. All participants are welcome, from analysts new to R to experienced microdata users!
Webinar Resources
- Webinar Slides from March 4 , March 11 , and March 25 , which include code to copy-and-paste during webinar session
- Participants who are new to R can use RStudio Cloud which is pre-configured with an API key and all packages installed. Note: Participants who joined our previous workshops and used RStudio Cloud will want to generate a new project from the link provided as this has new packages installed and new code.
- Participants who are comfortable with R and Git should clone the repository to their computers and get a Census API key , then activate the key from their email.