RESEARCH SERVICES

Public data for public purposes.

The DataWise Foundation conducts economic and social research and syndicates improved datasets, interactive visualizations, statistical analyses and econometric models, and narrative research findings (“data stories”). We improve technical pipelines for very large public datasets to generate insights for community economic development efforts and social enterprises.

Core data sources include the US Census’ American Community Survey (ACS) data on self-employment and business revenue and Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Our research work links to other DataWise Foundation initiatives by providing:

  • enhanced hands-on research experience for student interns through study of public data and practical data analytics methods;

  • program development insights and grantwriting aids for community nonprofits;

  • syndication through the Community Data Trust of enhanced and customized data sources to support local collective impact networks.

ACS COMMUNITY METRICS from IPUMS USA

The DataWise team has developed infrastructure that builds on the work of IPUMS USA at the University of Minnesota. IPUMS standardizes individual-level data from the US Census and its flagship American Community Survey (ACS).

DataWise uses Stata software to subset, recode, restructure, and aggregate the data in ways that facilitate calculation and visualization in Tableau and Power BI of both standard and custom metrics at four geographic levels: states, metro areas, counties, and Public Use Microsample Areas (PUMAs).

The Foundation is working to syndicate access to these resources through published PDF reports, interactive data visualizations, and custom support for very small nonprofits and for un(der)funded community initiatives.

CONTEXTUAL DATA PREPARATION

The DataWise team also has extensive experience linking multiple public datasets and linking public data to private organizational data to create custom metrics such as participation rates,