MIH512-Demography and Health (Module 2-CBT) - Essay Example

One site for United s census data is from the U.S. census bureau. The URL address is http www.census.gov/. This site is by far the most extensive site available for U.S. census data. It is the best site for finding information on the most recent census conducted in 2000. Also available are all of the census updates as recent as 2008. The site is not very attractive and it takes home hunting to find exactly how everything works. There is a section called the American FactFinder. This portion of the site gives data down to the block level for any geographic area of the US.

The reliability of the data presented is excellent because the U.S. census bureau administers the site. Another good site is found at the University of Virginia. The URL for the site is http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/. The name is referred to as the Historical Census Browser. Data for each census from 1790 to 1960 is available. This resource is outstanding because the data is organized neatly in charts and graphs. There also is a function called “MapIt” that will create a chloropleth map for any data set.

The data would be very accurate because the University of Virginia is a well-respected institution of higher education. Poor information would lessen their academic standing. A third site with census data is the Tiger mapping service of the U.S. census bureau. The URL is http://tiger.census.gov/. This information is excellent but the maps are difficult to produce. The service is slow and the maps do not offer much flexibility as far as manipulating data and copying. The information is dependable because it comes from the U.S. census bureau.

A great site for gathering census data on the country of Brazil is found at URL http://www.ibge.gov.br/english/. The IBGE is the Brazilian equivalent of the U.S. census bureau. It differs in that this agency seems much more concerned with gathering statistical data on agricultural and geographical data and not just population data. The site has an official feel to it and it is obviously administered by a governmental agency. The major drawback is some of the reports and statistics are not presented in English.

The home page has an English option, but other parts of the site are not yet translated. A second site that gives census statistics for foreign trade is the U.S. census bureau at URL http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c3510.html. Though this census information is specific to foreign trade with the U.S. it still is a good, dependable source of data. Demographic data is not represented well at this site, however. A final site you can access to find out about Brazil’s census is the notorious Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Brazil.

The information is nicely presented section by section. There are colorful maps and even insightful analysis of demographic data. The problem is that the information on Wikipedia just can’t be trusted. The two search engines I used for each search were Yahoo and Google. The results were different. I searched “us census data” and “brazil census data” on both engines. Google returned more sites that were linked to academic institutions and governmental entities. Yahoo’s first three sites on each search were product driven.

They were companies that use census data to sell a service or product. Google seemed to be the better choice for this type of research. One limitation all the sites had was the timeliness of the data. Conducting a census is a big job, but many of the sides offered data that was nearly ten years old at this point.