Comparability

Check the source, for this chart, the U.S. Census Bureau to find comparable data for other ethnic groups.

It is often important to provide information from various sources to build a complete picture of a topic, but there are instances where continuity of sources plays a role for presenting comparisons.

If you wanted to compare open land areas in 20 U.S. cities, the optimal sources of information would be those that count open land across differing cities by the same method: acreage, square miles, percent of overall land, city-owned versus privately-owned parcels, etc. Ideally, identifying one source that provides data for all the cities would make for the best comparability. This might be a U.S. government agency or an association that works on open land issues. Frequently, however, such neat sources aren't available or don't cover every place or variable you need. Locating additional sources that quantify information the same way is a challenge but can be important for supporting the point you want to make.

Maintained by lib-webmaster@wpi.edu
Last modified: Aug 06, 2008, 13:20 EDT