Brief Overall Description of the Dataset: The Urban institute was established to monitor federal policy programs, at the time for the war on drugs. Data comes from many federal, state and local data sources to create interactive maps and reports on certain issues in the country and around the world. The specific dataset they use is not available to purchase, but the individual sources they collect from are all available to download through their website.
Link: http://www.urban.org/research/data-methods
Date Inventory Completed: 6/1/2015
Screening
- Is the data collected opinion-based?
- Is the data collection recurring (must be collected at least annually)?
- Is there data available for 2013?
- Is the data collected at the property or housing unit level?
- Can we access the data by August 15th?
Purpose
What is the purpose of the organization collecting the data?
Evaluate current policy and programs
Why is it collected and how does the organization use it?
This data is collected in order to help policy-makers monitor current programs and create new ones when needed.
Who else uses the data?
Policy-makers
Who do they sell the data to?
Policy-makers, researchers
Method
What is the data collection method?
Searching through outside data sources such as the ACS, Zillow and HUD.
What is the type of data collected?
Administrative data
If designed, who created the questions?
What is the raw source of the collected data (prior to any aggregation)?
“Urban Institute researchers take advantage of dozens of existing quantitative data sets to study the world. These data come from the many federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as from dozens of private and proprietary sources.”
Description
What is the general topic of the data (1-2 words)?
American policy
What are the earliest and latest dates for which data is available?
Unknown
Timeliness
Is data collected and available periodically?
Unknown
How soon after a reference period ends can a data source be prepared and provided? (e.g., one year)
Unknown
Selectivity
What is the universe (e.g., population) that the data represents?
The United States
Accessibility
How is the data accessed?
Dependent on the organization the data is being downloaded from
Is it open data?
Some, data comes from other organizations and is downloaded through outside sites. Some is, some is not.
Any legal, regulatory, or administrative restrictions on accessing the data source?
Dependent on source downloading the data from.
Cost? - One time or annual or project based payment?
Dependent on their data sources
Does this dataset appear to meet our needs for the Census study? NO
Explanation:
All of the data available to download is straight from organizations such as the ACS, Zillow, BLS, and HUD. The website was also very vague, not really describing their own work, more as an educational site describing a general data collection process.