Impoverished Youth Index & Unused Church Properties

Project Title: Impoverished Youth Index & Unused Church Properties

Description:Identify unused church properties in McLennan County, Texas that may potentially be used to support social service targeted at impoverished youth. This visualization was built specifically for a graduate course cross-listed as Social Work/Truett Seminary.

Researchers Involved:

• Dr. Stephanie Boddie, Baylor School of Social Work
• Joshua Been, Baylor Libraries
• Sinai Wood, Baylor Libraries

Procedure:

1. Prepare data for Tableau
   1. Download 5-year American Community Survey (ACS) data by Census block group data from IPUMS NHGIS.
   2. Download additional data by Census tract data from Data Planet (commercial database).
   3. The Data Planet data was all proportional/currency format so values were passed to the constituent block groups and then merged with the ACS data table.
   4. QGIS application used to join combined variable table with Census TIGER block group shapefile.
   5. Download Texas Academic Performance Reports (TAPR) from Texas Education Agency for elementary schools in McLennan County.
   6. QGIS application used to spatially join each block group with the school’s data within the school’s attendance zone.
   7. Parcel shapefile for McLennan County downloaded from McLennan County Appraisal District: Open Records.
   8. QGIS application used to filter parcel shapefile for a religious organizations.
   9. Used the ‘merge shapefiles to one’ function within QGIS to combine block group shapefile containing variables and filtered parcel shapefile.
2. Build visualization within Tableau
   1. Create dual axis map with one axis for block groups and one for parcels.
   2. Add parameters and calculated fields to hold weights and calculated index.
   3. Publish.
   4. Due to student request, we added a tab to a second dashboard with aerial imagery. The aerial imagery was provided by USDA NAIP.