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11/21/2005

Mining the American Community Survey Data
by Glyn Finley, Business Consultant, UA SBDC

If your product or service appeals to a subset of the population, you can more accurately estimate the size of your potential market if you know certain things about the people who live in the market area of your existing business or your proposed business. For example:

• age distribution
• types of households
• growth and migration patterns
• educational attainment
• employment by industry
• types of housing units
• number of homeowners

The American Community Survey (ACS) may be the place to obtain this, and similar, information. The ACS is the Census Bureau’s solution to the need for current, detailed data for a specific geographic area. Currently, the ACS is in the testing and development stage. Data are available for Arkansas, Jefferson and Pulaski counties, and the two largest MSAs – Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers and Little Rock-North Little Rock. Eventually, the data will cover all counties and all MSAs.

If your need is for current demographic, social, economic or housing characteristics on a market area, be sure to check out the ACS. The link is:
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/

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The Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center is funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration through a partnership with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock College of Business and other institutions of higher education. All opinions, conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA. It is the goal of UALR to eliminate discriminatory harassment and to promote equal opportunity regardless of race, gender, color, national origin, sexual orientation, age, religion, veteran's status, or disability.