American Community Survey (ACS) 2023 Release – What You Need to Know
American Community Survey (ACS) 2019 – 2023 data are live on SparkMap! Read on to learn more about the data and how it may impact you.
What is ACS data?
What has changed?
Can I still access ACS 2018 – 2022 indicators?
1 – What is ACS data?
The American Community Survey (ACS) is an annual survey conducted by the US Census Bureau to provide detailed information on population and housing in the US. On SparkMap, we primarily include the ACS 5-year release data, as it includes larger sample sizes resulting in higher reliability. Many of the population and housing indicators in our Community Needs Assessment draw on ACS 5-year estimate data.
2 – What has changed?
There are no notable geography, indicator, or layer changes this year. Therefore, you can use the updated ACS data as you typically would.
Community Needs Assessment: We have updated 95 indicators in the Community Needs Assessment to 2019 – 2023 data. These updated indicators override the old indicators, making them inaccessible in the Community Needs Assessment. This also means any saved Community Needs Assessments using 2018 – 2022 ACS data have been automatically updated to the new indicators.
Map Room: We will have also added new map layers from the ACS 2019 – 2023 5-year estimates. Previous ACS map layers are still available in the Map Room.
3- Can I still access ACS 2018 – 2022 indicators?
We recognize that many of our customers are currently working on assessments, improvement plans, etc – if you need to revisit 2018 – 2022 ACS data for your work, we have included a link in the Community Needs Assessment interface (Figure 1).
Although we do not anticipate any changes, we also recommend double checking any saved geographies before using or comparing them between 2018 – 2022 ACS data and 2019 – 2023 data, as a best practice.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please reach out at sparkmap@missouri.edu.
