9  How to Use the Website Tool

This chapter outlines commonly asked questions that are specific to using the website tool.

The boundaries shown in the website tool at the city-level differ from the official city boundaries. What could be causing this?

Our tool defines a city as all census tracts whose area is at least 1 percent covered by the relevant census place. Often the boundaries of census tracts and census places don’t overlap perfectly, so parts of some tracts fall outside the place boundary. Because of our overinclusive definition, the tool thinks that many cities—particularly small and medium-sized ones—are bigger than they actually are, in both geographic size and population. For more information about the specific methodology and variables used and how they vary by geography, please see Chapter 13.

Why do I see multiple dots for each variable on the demographic disparity chart for national-level and state-level analysis on the website tool?

The demographic disparity chart shows in grey the demographic disparity scores for each state in the US for national-level analysis and each county in the state for state-level analysis.These scores should be interpreted as the difference between the percentage of the demographic group in the neighborhoods that the data in the given state or county come from and the percentage of the demographic group in the given state or county overall.

This information can help users better understand the distribution of the disparity within their geography of interest (e.g., whether all counties in the focus state have similar rates of disparity for Latinx residents), identify an area that may be driving the overall disparity score (e.g., a state in the US with a particularly high disparity for a given group), and identify areas that are more equitably allocating resources (where the disparity is closer to 0). Users can then use the state-level or county-level analysis to further examine results in states or counties of interest.

How do I export my results from the website tool?

You can export either the data displayed, or an image of the demographic disparity charts and the geographic disparity maps by clicking the export data button located at the bottom of the chart or the map.