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COMM 361: Entrepreneurial Journalism

Getting Started Video Tutorial

Starting a New Project

Any time you sign in as a guest user or start a new project within a personal account, SimplyAnalytics will ask you for:

  1. One or more locations you'd like to analyze
  2. Seed variables to start with

The most common types of location to enter at this stage are ZIP codes, cities, or counties.

Tip: If you're looking at the State College area, we recommend using Centre County as your starting location.

Did you know? What we often think of as "State College" is actually several municipalities, including: the Borough of State College; College Township; Ferguson Township; Harris Township; and Patton Township. There are also Census Designated Places (CDPs) within or spanning across those townships, including Boalsburg, Houserville, Lemont, Park Forest Village, Pine Grove Mills, and Toftrees.

When you type in State College as a location, it's only going to highlight the Borough of State College, which generally includes the areas immediately adjacent to and to the southeast of Penn State's University Park campus.

SimplyAnalytics recommends adding at least one seed variable so that the tool can autogenerate a map and reports for you to use as a starting point. If you're not sure what to start with, try Median Household Income. 

Adding Data

Additional variables will be found under the Data tab. By default, they are organized by Category, but you can also organize them by Data Folder, which is broken down into data sources (i.e. Census Bureau, MRI-Simmons) and then into source-specific sub-categories.

Data variables can be searched for by entering a search term related to the type of information you're looking for and using filters to narrow the search results further. For example, if you're interested in looking at what consumer behavior variables are available related to social media use, you could search for "social media" (including the quotations) and then selecting Consumer Behavior under Category in the filters menu.

Tip: Need more information about a variable? Want to know what year the data was collected in? Click on the three dots next to the variable and then View Metadata for more details.

Adding Locations

While you can zoom in and out and drag the map to other locations when using the Map view, you may want to generate other views that require you to formally add locations other than the initial location you used.

The process for adding locations is similar to the process for adding variables. Click on Locations in the main menu, then search for a location and click on it when it appears.

You can also create custom locations, combine existing locations, or rename Census tracts and block groups to make them more identifiable in tables. For more information, visit the Custom Locations page of this guide.

Adding Business Locations

To display locations of businesses on your map, click on the Businesses tab in the main menu. 

From there, you can search for business by entering a keyword in the search box; click on Use advanced search to combine keyword searching with searching for businesses by industry classification; or click on Browse business categories to search or browse through the NAICS or SIC industry classification systems.

For example, if you wanted to display all bookstores in the State College area on your map, you could:

  • Use book as a keyword search - this would look for any business name that has "book" in either the business name or in the lines of business listed
  • Use Browse business categories to select NAICS code 459210 - Book Retailers and News Dealers to display any business that is classified as part of that industry
  • Click on Use advanced search to search for Name contains book OR NAICS starts with 45921 OR SIC starts with 5942 - the SIC code 5942 is for Book Stores
Tip: Sometimes, a business you're expecting to come up in a search might not appear with the search criteria you enter. One strategy may be to look up the business by name to see how it's classified. You could also try widening the industry classification criteria.