TY - JOUR AU - Whitehead, Ellen PY - 2018/08/29 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Exploring Neighborhood Inequality with Census Data JF - TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology JA - TRAILS VL - IS - SE - DO - UR - https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/exploring-neighborhood-inequality-with-census-data SP - AB - This hands-on activity is designed to help students consider neighborhoods as a dimension of inequality, using census data to examine neighborhood characteristics. By selecting specific neighborhoods and variables of interest, developing hypotheses, and interpreting data, students also enhance their understanding of how sociologists evaluate inequality quantitatively. In this activity, students compare and contrast the population characteristics of two different neighborhoods. The activity begins with a tutorial on how to access and explore census data, using publicly available data from the Social Explorer website (https://www.socialexplorer.com/). Next, students select two neighborhoods with which they are familiar and develop hypotheses on how the two neighborhoods compare and contrast. Using the Tables feature on Social Explorer, students select three neighborhood characteristics and provide information on these variables. Finally, students provide a written summary of their findings and examine whether their initial hypotheses were supported by the data. The activity concludes with an in-class discussion of the students’ findings. Upon completion of this activity, students will have gained experience with accessing and interpreting neighborhood-level census data. By increasing students’ understanding of inequalities that exist between neighborhoods, this activity encourages students to think beyond individualistic explanations of poverty and begin considering the spatial dimension. Further, developing hypotheses and comparing variable distributions will provide undergraduates with practice in answering their own sociological questions. As the activity asks students to select the neighborhoods and characteristics themselves, they are able to explore questions that may be of personal interest, thereby enhancing engagement with the activity. ER -