Methods
Fast Food Restaurants Data
We created a fast food data set for the Boston, Chicago and San Francisco Bay Area (San Francisco, Berkeley & Oakland) metropolitan areas by including QSR’s 2008 top 30 ranked fast food outlets listed by revenue. We further narrowed this list by searching for the Standard Industrial Classifications (SIC) in the US Business Finder Records database specific to fast food chain restaurants only (excluding coffee shops). We obtained street level geocodes for 921 fast outlets in the combined metropolitan areas included within the map.
School Data
We utilized school listings from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to create a comprhensive list of both public and private schools for the Boston, Chicago and San Francisco Bay Area metropolitan areas. We included data for all school levels including primary (pre-k through grade 3), middle (grade 4 through 7), high (grade 7 through 12) and other (any configuration not fitting within the previous three levels). We obtained street level geocodes for 1,717 schools in the combined metropolitan areas included within the map.
