Plotting Data to Census Tracts (Request for Help)

[AndrewRushmore]

Hello!

I'm fairly new to GIS, but work as a marketing analyst for social media and web type data, so consider me a rapidly learning intermediate 🙂

From this link:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/download-the-data.aspx#.UzSQvvldV8F

[INDENT]Note for GIS users: The Atlas is based on 2010 census tract polygons. To use the underlying Atlas data in a GIS, the data from this spreadsheet needs to be joined to a census tract boundary file. With ESRI software, users should have access to the tract layer on ESRI's "Data and Maps" data distribution. For users of other software, tract boundaries can be downloaded directly from the Census Bureau's[/INDENT]

I have been trying to pair Food Access Research (Link to Document) to ArcGIS, but I'm unable to figure out how to do that past the state level.

I appreciate any guidance or answers people have, thank you for your time! This research is to benefit a non-profit I am working with to help find low-income areas that are "food deserts" so they can target locations to place stores offering healthy food in key neighborhoods. It's not a college project or a corporate project, if that helps anyone to want to help more 🙂

[JimCousins]

Looking at the Census Tract polygon data, and the spreadsheet from USDA, You should perform a join based on attributes using the FIPS column of the Census Tract data, and the CensusTract column of the spreadsheet. At this point, the spreadsheet data is associated with the polygon data, and can be used for symbology or analysis.
Best Regards,
Jim