ISO data

February 12, 2009 12:03 PM

Google-fu masters: I need some stats, STAT.

I have been looking for two days for this set of specific data. I've been to all the usual government and research foundation sites, but I can't seem to find what I need. Self-admittedly, I have terrible google-fu. If anyone feels like going on a treasure hunt for me, I'd give you a virtual high five.

I'm looking for a North Carolina county-by-county breakdown of the following information (data from 2005 or later only please):
--Domestic violence (insubstantiated and substantiated)
--Substance abuse
--Single parent households
--Court ordered child support
--High school graduation rate of males
--Incarceration rate of males
--Fertility rates of unmarried women
--Martial, separation, and divorce rates

I have been able to find loads of other data that I need, but it seems that data on issues related to these subjects just slightly misses the mark. I also understand that data might not be available for a lot of this stuff as well.

Thanks for any help you can give.

posted by greta simone to grab bag (16 answers total)

Not sure that I can provide specific help, but some of the following sites might be useful places to start:

http://infochimps.org/
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet
http://theinfo.org/
posted by verb at 12:25 PM on February 12, 2009

In doing some quick searching, it looks like DataFerrett (part of the US Census) might do what you need. I've been playing around with it, and can't quite get it to give me the data I want, but stats isn't really my thing. Maybe you can get it to work?
posted by niles at 12:26 PM on February 12, 2009

You've looked through all of these?
(I can get you teen pregnancy stats county by county, but haven't had to go in detail about these other things so much)
posted by Stewriffic at 12:26 PM on February 12, 2009

Oh, to clarify - while I can't get it to give the data filtered the way I want, it looks like most (if not all) of your topics are in the numerous databases that DataFerrett accesses.
posted by niles at 12:28 PM on February 12, 2009

Also, try this: LINC. (am trying it out myself to see if it gets you what you need, but thought I'd get it to you sooner rather than later)
posted by Stewriffic at 12:36 PM on February 12, 2009

Is this something like what you'd want?

2007 Persons Served in NC Alcohol and Drug Treatment Centers (518): Sometimes referred to as ''episodes of care'', these counts reflect the total number of persons who were active (or the resident population) at the start of the state fiscal year plus the total of first admissions, readmissions, and transfers-in which occurred during the fiscal year at the three state alcohol and drug abuse treatment centers.
posted by Stewriffic at 12:41 PM on February 12, 2009

2007 Pregnancies for Females of All Ages (501):
posted by Stewriffic at 12:42 PM on February 12, 2009

Hey Stew. Yeah, I had actually found the marriage and divorce info in LINC earlier, I just forgot to take it off the list. The Alcohol and Drug Treatment one may be acceptable too. I must have missed this the first time around. Maybe I just need to be a little more thorough on this site. And hey, instead of a virtual high five, you might actually get a beer.
posted by greta simone at 12:44 PM on February 12, 2009

Yeah, don't need the pregnancy one. Too broad.
posted by greta simone at 12:44 PM on February 12, 2009

I can keep going, or you can. I'm using the LINC (Log Into NC) database, browsing by agency, and selecting all counties. The interface is a bit bizarre, but I hope that helps. I'll stop my posting flurry now.
posted by Stewriffic at 12:45 PM on February 12, 2009

Whoops.
posted by Stewriffic at 12:45 PM on February 12, 2009

If you're looking for grad rates by county (what percentage is graduating from a county's schools) as opposed to the education level of the populace of the county (what percentage of males over a certain age has a high school degree - could be earned from anywhere, then these reports look like what you're looking for wrt to grad rates, but the second file "District and State Graduation Rate Report, as of July 25, 2008" is missing. I would contact them to try to get that data.

Graduation rates are going to be by school district, which doesn't always correspond perfectly with county (cf Orange Co Schools & Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools), especially with the confounding factor of the ~100 charter schools in the state.
posted by clerestory at 1:13 PM on February 12, 2009

Also, here's the Domestic Violence Stats (pdf) from 2004-2005 by county. Technically, they're stats of services provided, but as you were interested in both reported and unreported, that gets you a little closer, recording everyone who reached out for help even if a crime wasn't reported/prosecuted. I found them here.

You might try contacting the NC Coalition Against Domestic Violence to see if they have anything more recent than that.
posted by clerestory at 1:38 PM on February 12, 2009

Thanks so far guys. Now I just need these remaining three:
--Court ordered child support
--Incarceration rate of males
--Fertility rates of unmarried women
posted by greta simone at 4:23 PM on February 12, 2009

The CDC's NHANES dataset has really detailed data on fertility (and about a thousand other health-related issues). Look under the "Reproductive Health" section on this page. That data can be merged by respondent ID with the marital status question from the demographics portion of the study. All in all, this study is an awesome dataset.

That said, the publicly available data does not include location, presumably for privacy reasons. It is possible to get geographic data for each respondent ID, which would let you filter for individual counties in North Carolina, but you'd need to apply for access.
posted by CruiseSavvy at 9:18 PM on February 12, 2009

And actually, if you're going to the trouble of getting access to the geo-coding for NHANES, you could use it for several of your other data needs as well:
--Substance abuse: check out the drug use section (link to questionnaire)
--Single parent households: demographics section (link to the questionnaire)
--High school graduation rate of males: demographics section
--Martial, separation, and divorce rates:demographics section

What's nice about this is that since all the data is connected by respondent IDs you could then also relate things like graduation rates and divorce, etc.

Like I said, I really like this data set.

(All this assumes, of course, getting access to the geographic data, and a sufficient sample size in each county.)
posted by CruiseSavvy at 9:25 PM on February 12, 2009