# Ohio Opportunity Index
Version 4: Quick Start Guide

Author

GRC Opportunity Index Team

Published

August 18, 2026

## Introduction

The Ohio Opportunity Index (OOI) is an area-focused metric that aggregates neighborhood conditions based on factors tied to healthy growth and well-being of individuals into a single index score. Its uses could include

- focusing resource distribution
- facilitating research
- informing policy decisions

by offering a comprehensive geographic perspective on growth and health opportunities in Ohio at a Census tract, zip code, or county level.

## Content Notes

This data package contains the OOI version 4 data for multiple geographies (tract, zip/ZCTA, county), a brief report of methods and changes from OOI version 3, and this quick start guide.

The table below provides simple descriptions of the fields in the OOI data files. Domain scores represent the degree of opportunity within an area based on variables related to socioeconomic, health, and / or environmental influences that were tied to each domain concept. The “Overall Ohio Opportunity Index” is a composite measure derived from the domain scores and represents an aggregate index of opportunity for each geographic unit.

The domain scores and the overall OOI scores are on different scales. The domain scores are means of the standardized individual variables nested within each domain. Each collection of domain scores (e.g., tract-level housing scores) are standardized to have a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1. The overall OOI score is a combination of the domain scores and has been scaled to have values that range between 0 and 100. All variables are directed such that higher values refer to higher levels of opportunity. Please see the included report on more details of how the index and its components are constructed.

The zip code data file was intended to represent opportunity by zip code as opposed to (but not excluding) zip code tabulation area (ZCTA) identifier. It is derived from the tract-level opportunity scores. We first assigned a score to each Census block based on the Census tract in which it is situated and then aggregated those scores to the geographic ZCTA level using a weighted mean. The weight is the population size in the block. We then used a crosswalk that assigns zip codes to ZCTAs, which was downloaded from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), to effectively duplicate some ZCTA OOI and domain values for all zip codes that the crosswalk assigns to each ZCTA. Therefore, joining/merging the OOI zip code data file to your data will work well regardless of whether your data are identified by zip code OR by ZCTA.

The county data file is intended to represent opportunity by county identifier. Similar to the zip code data file, the county data file was derived from the tract-level opportunity scores. However, because census tracts are perfectly nested within counties, we directly aggregated tract scores within a county, again using a weighted mean, which is weighted on the tract population.

## Variable Names and Brief Description

Variable | Description
--- | ---
tract, zip_code, county | Geographic identifier (census tract FIPS, ZIP Code, or county FIPS)
ooi | Overall OOI v4 score (0–100; higher = more opportunity)
d_crime | Domain score — Crime and Safety
d_educ | Domain score — Education
d_employ | Domain score — Employment
d_env | Domain score — Environment
d_health | Domain score — Health
d_house | Domain score — Housing
d_trans | Domain score — Motorized Transportation
no_pop | Indicator (tracts only) that the census tract population is zero

Project Contact: Nathan.Doogan@osumc.edu