Frequently Asked Questions

Erie's peer counties were selected based on a process that sought to identify counties with similar characteristics.

The full description can be found at: www.erievitalsigns.org/peer-counties

Erie Vital Signs was launched by The Erie Community Foundation. The Foundation consulted various stakeholders and data experts throughout the county for their guidance during its development. The Erie County Data Center coordinated creation of the website and provided the data and analysis.

An indicator is a measure that helps to describe an economic, environmental, social, or cultural condition over time. An indicator is often expressed as a rate or percent, such as the poverty rate, the unemployment rate, or the air quality index.

We studied a list of available indicators and, with assistance from local experts in the public, private and nonprofit sectors, determined which ones would be most significant to highlight important trends and issues in our area.

• The data should be available and relatively easy to access.
• It should be reliably and consistently tracked over multiple years, ideally updated at least annually.
• The data should be understandable to both the general public and key decision-makers.
• The indicator should reflect broad community goals and be tied to critical issues the region is attempting to address. Positive changes in the indicator data should reflect progress in addressing key issues and achieving desired outcomes.
• Data for the indicator should be available for multiple geographic areas (for example, all counties in a state) and should be available for the state and/or nation so that reasonable comparisons can be made to help put the data in context.
• As a set, the indicators selected should ideally include both leading and lagging indicators.
• In addition, only indicators that provide community-wide data relating to outcomes should be considered for inclusion; for example, data pertaining only to individual agencies or programs, and that could not be collected and analyzed for the larger community, should typically not be considered for inclusion.

Much of the data comes from existing sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureau, state and federal government agencies, and universities. No "primary data collection" was performed, meaning that all data shown on the site was collected by another source, often a state or federal agency. You can find the data source for each indicator on the data table and charts provided for that indicator. Raw numbers were converted to rates and dollars were adjusted for inflation to provide a reasonable basis for comparisons.

In gathering data for Erie Vital Signs some data are available every year and regularly and quickly updated, other datasets take longer to update, so the data on the website contains the most recent data, but may be 2-3 years old.

The Erie County Data Center will provide Erie Vital Signs with the most timely information available, updating indicators on an ongoing basis.

The U.S. Census American Commmunity Survey, ACS for short, is a demographics survey program that regularly gathers information such as ancestry, citizenship, educational attainment, income, language proficiency, migration, disability, employment, and housing characteristics. These data are used by many public-sector, private-sector, and not-for-profit stakeholders to allocate funding, track shifting demographics, plan for emergencies, and learn about local communities. The survey is sent to approximately 295,000 addresses monthly (or 3.5 million per year), and is the largest household survey that the Census Bureau administers

Learn more here.