About this Project

The Making Progress report is the culmination of hard work by a variety of agencies and organizations to present quality of life metrics within a single forum.  New metrics and measures are always being created and improved.  All of the information presented in this document is taken from authoritative data sources.  In some cases (mortality statistics, neighborhood associations, library users, crime statistics and education), raw data are collected from the agencies listed in the data credits and used for this analysis.  In other cases where collecting these raw data is logistically impossible on a yearly basis (American Community Survey, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System), a sampling of data is taken and modeled for an entire population.  While an average value or score is taken from these samples, it does so with the knowledge that some error will exist.  This error is best described using a confidence interval (CI) and margin of error (MOE). Where provided by the data source, the number of samples (N) and error is denoted within the dataset.  Please refer to the documentation below regarding the terminology, semantics, techniques and methods used to collect and describe these data.