These Community Vital Signs are inspired by an project in the City of San José to develop a tool to help catalyze and facilitate discussions around community improvement.

The Vital Signs integrate a multitude of local, state, and federal data sources using a unique methodology to develop a better understanding of a community.

Currently the Community Vital Signs on this site include 20 of the 42 dimensions included in the San Jose project for which there is census tract level information. The Vital Signs include census-tract-level data from the American Community Survey and the CDC Places 2020 database.

Basic Steps in the Methodology

• Collect census tract information on each of the elements of the index by U.S. County
• Group information by by sub-dimension.
• Determine sort order for each element - distinguish between elements for which a higher value is a more positive social indicator and those where a lower value is more positive.
• Perform principal component analysis within each sub-dimension. Use inverse values for elements where lower indicator is "better." Apply standard min-max functions.
• Average the sub-dimensions within each of the three primary dimensions of the index.
• Average the primary dimensions to develop the Vital Sign Index for the census tract.
• Present the census tract values in quartiles across the respective counties.