VT Census Case Studies : School Attendance Boundary Information System (SABINS)

Created by ziemer, last modified by molfe on 10 Jun 2015

Brief Overall Description of the Dataset:

Data that includes school attendance areas along with some characteristics about demographics in the districts.

Link: http://www.sabinsdata.org/ 

Date Inventory Completed: 6/4/15

Screening

  • Is the data collected opinion-based?
  • Is the data collection recurring (must be collected at least annually)?
  • Is there data available for 2013?
  • For Education: Is the data collected at least the school level?
  • Can we access the data by August 15th?
  • Can the data be linked to other education/workforce datasets (e.g., K-12, higher education, workforce)?

Purpose

  • What is the purpose of the organization collecting the data?

“Integrating school attendance boundaries with census tabulations and educational data enables researchers and policy-makers to access a wealth of information describing the characteristics of children and families who live within thousands of school attendance zones.”

  • Why is it collected and how does the organization use it?

Collected for public use, the organization was set up to provide information for researchers and educators

  • Who else uses the data?

Researchers

  • Who do they sell the data to?

N//A


Method

  • What is the data collection method? 

Collection from different states

  • What is the type of data collected? 

GIS data and administrative data

  • If designed, who created the questions?

N/A

  • What is the raw source of the collected data (prior to any aggregation)? 

N/A


Description

  • What is the general topic of the data (1-2 words)?

School district maps

  • What are the earliest and latest dates for which data is available?

Maps are most recently updated from 2012

  • Is data collected and available periodically?

No

  • How soon after a reference period ends can a data source be prepared and provided? 

N/A, grant funding ran out


Selectivity (conversely, the representativeness)

  • What is the universe (e.g., population) that the data represents (consider inclusion/exclusion criteria)?

Public school districts


Accessibility

  • How is the data accessed?

Online

  • Is it open data?

Yes

  • Any legal, regulatory, or administrative restrictions on accessing the data source?

No

  • Cost? - One time or annual or project based payment?

N/A

Does this dataset appear to meet our needs for the Census study? YES

Explanation: This is open data that can be used in GIS mapping of many school districts across the country--will be very helpful when doing spatial analysis.