This section describes the sources of most statistics cited in this report. It is provided both to clarify and qualify the data presented and to encourage further exploration.
STATS Indiana
STATS Indiana is the most comprehensive source data about Indiana. The service operates in partnership between the State of Indiana and the Indiana Business Research Center of Indiana University.
http://www.stats.indiana.edu/
Home page – For Howard County data, select "USA County Profile"
http://www.stats.indiana.edu/uspr/a/us_profile_frame.html
Select "Howard" from the pull down menu. Select "Compare within State" to see your county's rankings among Indiana's 92 counties. Select sub-pages from blue divider line for more details. The "All" category generates a report of all currently available data.
http://www.stats.indiana.edu/profiles/pr18067.html
Current Howard County Profile Page. (Website address may change in future.)
Indiana Youth Institute
http://www.iyi.org/statistics_facts/main.asp
Comprehensive array of indicators pertaining to youth and family. Excellent documentation of data sources and definitions.
http://www.iyi.org/kids_count_data/pdf/datapdfs/howard.pdf
Howard County Profile (updated annually)
http://iyikcdb.iyi.org/county_home.asp
Use this link to create customized tables for your county. You may include other counties or the state as a whole to display alongside your own.
American Community Survey
The relatively new ACS, conducted by the Census Bureau between decennial censuses, is based on three years of survey data. At this time, county-level data have a relatively high margin of error. When possible, report ranges based on the error rate rather than the estimate alone.
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_submenuId=&_lang=en&_ts=
Select "Data Profile" from the latest annual release of the American Community Survey. A series of pull-down menus will lead you to a report on Howard County. Select the Social, Economic, Housing, and Narrative Reports for detailed information.
Indiana Department of Education
http://www.doe.state.in.us/htmls/education.html
Provides up to date demographic and performance data for each school and school corporation. For county-level data, use Indiana Youth Institute.
Indiana Coalition for Housing and Homeless Issues
http://www.wdsi.org/calculator/
Self-Sufficiency Budget Calculator
http://www.ichhi.org/clientuploads/downloads/reportspublications/ the_2005_selfsufficiency_standard_for_indiana_final_92805.pdf
How the budget was created
FBI Uniform Crime Reports
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm or
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/crime/
Standard crime data is contained in the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. The FBI reports data by jurisdiction, which is later compiled to the county level, resulting in considerable lag times. For the most recent local data, obtain it locally. Be sure to include all three of Howard County's jurisdictions (Kokomo, County, and State Police).
Using data for Indiana can be complicated by some jurisdictions' failure to report, but our review of recent data for Howard County indicates that all three jurisdictions are consistently reporting every year.
Welfare
http://www.state.in.us/fssa/family/statistics/index.html
Caseloads of the Family and Social Services Administration are reported here by month. Traditionally, June caseload numbers are used for year-to-year comparisons.
The Indiana Youth Institute website includes some annualized welfare data. It is more user-friendly than FSSA's site but less current.
Health
http://www.state.in.us/isdh/dataandstats/data_and_statistics.htm
The Indiana State Department of Health provides statistics about births, deaths, and occurrences of disease. Because of the nature of the data, the Department of Health takes great efforts to assure its accuracy and completeness, and generally releases compilations only after all 92 counties have reported. This sometimes results in a two-year lag. The local county health department may have more recent data but it will not be comparable to statewide numbers.