I am trying to gather data on several towns in Massachusetts that are smaller than the PUMA areas. Is there a way to gather data by census tract instead? Is it possible to create this variable on the system?
Unfortunately, public use microdata are not available at the census tract level, therefore, you will not find (or be able to create) this geography in the Online Data Analysis System. I would recommend that you consider looking into the data available from IPUMS NHGIS. IPUMS NHGIS provides spatially aggregated census data and has many summary tables available at the census tract level.