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Q: What should I do if I'm using STATA? A: STATA users should download a CSV file and import it with the insheet command. Q: What do I do if I get a 'Forbidden' or other error message when selecting large numbers of fields (>150)? A: At the moment, selecting very large number of fields is not supported. If you wish to access a large proportion of the data, please click the 'all data' link in the navigation bar to the left, download the whole data set, and filter it in your own data analysis program of choice. Q: What do I do if fields are not being properly selected? A: Some browsers do not handle the field selection page as desired. Either try using a different browser (for instance IE 6+, or a recent version of Mozilla/Firefox), or click the 'Use Less Javascript' link. This will put the page into a compatibility mode, where it will be slower to add/remove fields (requiring talking to the server at each step) but which should function on a wider range of browsers. Q: How do I select my data? The data selection process consists of the following three steps: The field selection page has three main components: The grid of currently selected fields, the set of unused fields, and field descriptions for the currently selected unused fields. Currently selected field grid has field name on the vertical axis, and year on the horizontal. Fields may be removed by clicking on the checkbox at the desired intersection of the field row and the year column, toggling it from checked to unchecked. Similarly, additional years may be added to a currently selected field by clicking on the appropriate checkbox, toggling it from unchecked to checked. Additionally, a whole row or column may be toggled by clicking on one of the small 'x' links at the left and top of grid. Note that when the user action would make a row empty, it will be removed from the grid and place in the unused fields section. The unused fields list consists of three parts: the list of fields (left), the list of years (right), and the add button (center). When the user selects one or more of the fields in the field list, all the available years for these fields become visible in the list of years (note that a year will be shown if it is available for any of the fields selected, not necessarily all). The user may then select the years they want. Clicking 'Add' will move the corresponding fields to the currently selected fields grid; note that if a field was selected, but no year corresponding to it was selected, then it will not be moved, but will remain selected in the unused fields section. The field description section is updated based on the user's selection in the field list part of the unused fields list. For each selected field, the field name, the available years, and a brief description of the field are shown. In order to proceed to the next step, the user should click either of the two 'Proceed' buttons. The filters allow one to filter, or cut down, the data that is received. The filter page may have one or more filter sets available. In each set, the most permissive option, that is the one returning the most data, is to have nothing selected. Beyond that, filters in the same set "union" or "add" while filters in different sets "intersect" or "subtract." For instance, say there were two filter sets, "Population" and "State." Then, the following examples demonstrate how filtering works:
The final step allows the user to select the desired output format. The three available formats are:
If a specific data file has already been generated before and is cached, the exact file size will be known and will be shown. |