Demographics

[andy]

I want to show demographics. A table has data entered indicating; race,
gender, age, and other descriptive information of names entered. How do I
sort in a report by each characteristic, then get a running total of each
characteristic? For example, 54 black females, 202 white males? If I can
learn the basics I can expand from there.

 

[Ed Warren]

One of your hardest issues is building a table of "allowed" values. In your
example, "black", "white", are very troublesome what if you want "Cherokee"
also. In order to ever make sense of your data you will need to have such a
table that limits the choices. Otherwise you end up with variations of
spelling and shades of classification that when grouped make no sense to
your 'termonology model'

As an interesting aside some datatabases even have up to 7 different groups
for gender:

Another issue is Age (a value that changes over time). You will be better
off with DateOf Birth (a constant -- unless you live in California :>)

After you have the proper grouping you simply use a 'groupby' query. Look
for the 'sigma' (sum) icon on the toolbar of the query builder and you group
by the fields of interest. Start with getting just a simple group like
"male", "female" after you see how that works you should be able to extend
that to get the combined grouping you desire.

You can then display the data from the group query in either a form or
report as desired. In the report you can add a group header, footer and set
it to report a running sum or group sum.

Lots of luck on your project.

Ed Warren.

 

[andy]

Thany you. I'm not a "techie" so I don't completely understand all of what
you are saying, but if I go in and tool around with it, I may be able to
figure it out. The way I indicate black, white, male, female, is with first
letters in the database, b, w, m, f.

 

[Ed Warren]

The issue I am trying to raise is:
1. Make sure you have clearly defined categories.
2. Make sure all cases can be classified into one of the available
categories.
Example: Would Tiger Woods be "w", or "b" ?? In either case he and others
may strongly disagree with your classification.

Ed Warren

 

[andy]

Oh - the categories are defined by the persons. They completed applications
and indicated their, gender, race, etc. That is not the issue.

The problem is how do I get a report to count the number of Bs the number of
Ws the number of Ms the number of Fs and then show me what percentages of the
total are white, hispanic, black, female, male, etc.? The field names are
Race, Gender, etc. but I can't figure out how to properly group the report
and do the calculations.

Also, I couldn't figure out how to do the groupby query in the query build
view. I clicked on the sigma icon and groupby appeared in the proper field,
but I didn't know what to do next.

 

[Ed Warren]

Try starting with 'baby steps' get a query to give you the number of each
gender.

1. Open the query designer
2. add your table to the designer
3. add the field 'gender'
4. add the primary key field e.g. "id"
5. Select the groupby icon (sigma)
6. under 'gender' select "groupby"
7. under ID select "count"
8. run the query
it should return a count of the number of each gender in the database

9. add the field "race"
under 'race' select groupby

10. run the query

Now it returns a row for each combination of 'gender' and 'race' with a
count of the number of records in the 'group'

Variations of this theme will eventually get you the results you want, you
have to work with it a bit to understand what it is doing.

Ed Warren.

 

[andy]

thank you so much - this is what i need - baby steps - will let you know if i
get what i need.