Skip to content

Contributing data

Jump to bottom
Susan Paykin edited this page Oct 31, 2022 · 5 revisions

Here’s how to contribute or add data to the OEPS.

Contributing data

  1. Clone the OEPS repo. This is essentially creating a remote repository of the main repo on your local device. See here for instructions on how to clone a repo.

  2. Create your own branch. This will allow you to make edits (add or update data, metadata, etc) locally on your own device, and then issue a pull request to merge with the main branch. See here for more instructions on creating branches.

  3. Prepare your data. Is your data clean, defined at one or more spatial scales (state, county, zip, or tract) and ready to add? Great. If you’re cleaning it up, add any code or scripts you used to the code folder so other users can see what you did. Currently, all final datasets are formatted as .csv files, with GEOID labels for easy merging with spatial geometry files.

  4. Follow our data standards and guidelines. Check our file naming standards and ensure yours are aligned. All final .csv datasets are named using the following convention:

[Theme Abbreviation][2-digit number]_[Spatial Scale].csv

For example, the Policy theme dataset on Prison Incarceration Rates (PS01) at the county-level is PS01_C.csv. The same dataset at the state level is PS01_S.csv, at the tract-level would be PS01_T.csv, and at the zip code level would be PS01_Z.csv. See below for more on File Name Standards.

  1. Follow formatting guidelines. Follow our additional data format standards for labeling geographic identifiers (GEOIDs) and other formatting. Please also make note of the following guidelines:
  • Variables names should be no more than 10 characters
  • Numeric observations should be rounded to the nearest tenth (two decimal places)
  • Remove any index columns
  • Remove quotations marks, commas, or other character punctuation
  • Code missing as unavailable data as NA or empty

  1. Document your data. You must add a metadata documentation file to accompany your dataset contribution(s). Create a markdown (.md) file and add it to the metadata folder, located within the data_final folder. Copy this standardized pre-formatted template for your metadata description file. Name your .md file clearly to match your dataset, and add it to the metadata folder.

  2. Submit a pull request. Pull requests let you tell others about changes you've pushed to your branch. Once a pull request is opened, we can review the potential changes and add follow-up commits before your changes are merged into the main branch. See here for instructions on how to create a pull request.

  3. Add an issue to flag your contribution. We use this to track updating the main README and Data Overview table. Add an issue that says something like the the following:

Added new data:

  • Dataset file name, i.e. BE08
  • Dataset short description
  • Data source, year
  • Metadata (or name of file, i.e. Parks_Cover.md)
  • Spatial scale(s)

File Name Standards

Theme Abbreviations

  • Policy: PS
  • Health: Health, Access
  • Demographic: DS
  • Economic: EC
  • Physical Environment: BE
  • COVID-19: COVID

Spatial Scales

  • Tract: T
  • Zip/ZCTA: Z
  • County: C
  • State: S
Clone this wiki locally