NSF project looks to define social science research for the 21st century. The major objective of the SOCN is to continue exploration of ideas regarding the potential form and functioning of such a network of social observatories and to actively engage individuals and groups across the SBE research community in this process.
2. The Challenge to SBE sciences
Globalization
Social media
Declining response rates to surveys
Rapid social and environmental changes
Rapid shifts in the economy and in social
groups
Many current challenges are local
3. Key SBE Scientific Questions
Opportunity and mobility: Place-based studies can help us better
understand important issues such as the local sources of social inequality
and disadvantage
Place-based local studies can document the organization of
neighborhoods and institutions, distribution and quality of schools,
access to medical clinics and facilities, and employment
opportunities in the informal sector
Adaptation and Change: Place-based studies are better for examining
responses to natural, economic, and social shocks (e.g., hurricane
Katrina) – but we need to be in the communities before these events
occur
Behavior change: Studies of multiple places can contribute to our
knowledge of the context in which micro-level behavior occurs: Could
run experiments in different sites to see how the results vary across
contexts. This has rarely been done.
4. Data for People and Places
There is increased interest in linking different types of
data, particularly to situate people in place. Many data
sets do not provide the option to link with place at a fine
(e.g. tract, neighborhood) level.
Included are individual data with great detail or
granularity. Other data come from a variety of sources –
administrative, local land use, census.
There is a need to collaborate across disciplines.
We need tools to design better policy instruments that
address human variability at the local level.
5. Origins of the Observatory Idea
NSF sponsored some 8 workshops with members of the
scientific community from 2005 to present, originally
focusing on cyber-infrastructure for the social, behavioral
and economic sciences
Recent ones: December 2010, Oct. 2011, Feb 2012, and
May 2012
Ten of us submitted a grant proposal to NSF for a
Research Coordinating Network, the Social Observatories
Coordinating Network (SOCN); we are funded for 3
years to obtain feedback from the scientific communities
about this idea and produce a recommendation..
6. What is an Observatory?
Each observatory or regional data center would
be an entity, whether physical or virtual, that is
charged with collecting, curating, and
disseminating data from people, places, and
institutions in the United States.
These centers must provide a basis for inference
from what happens in local places to a national
context and ensure a robust theoretical foundation
for social analysis.
7. Why the Observatory Approach?
Observatories have a long history in the natural and
ecological sciences, and they have served as points around
which those communities have come together to strengthen
their disciplines
The large national longitudinal surveys can be thought of as
a type of observatory, and have provided valuable data that
are standardized and consistent but, with some exceptions,
they cannot provide a detailed picture of a local area.
AND there are growing problems with their ever rising
costs, and with declining response rates across many of the
surveys
AND many questions of interest to parts of SBE disciplines
are not addressed by these surveys
8. How will the Observatories be
Nationally Representative?
To accomplish these objectives, we
propose to embed these regionally-based
data centers in a nationally representative
population-based sample that would enable
the observatory data to be aggregated in
such a way as to produce a national picture
of the United States on an ongoing basis.
9. The Basic Problem
People are highly concentrated in places
Many places have few people
Key question: Do you use place or
population as the basis of the design?
10.
11. Our Proposal:
A sample of about 400 census tracts would be selected to
represent the U.S. population while also fully capturing the
diversity that characterizes local places.
A unified centralized framework but distributed model
Each observatory would be responsible for gathering information
in a preselected set of census tracts
The entire set of information gathered by all the observatories
would provide a national sample to address core questions
common across the observatories.
In addition, each regional observatory could develop a set of
priorities for research that differ from those of other
observatories.
12. What types of data could be collected?
Administrative sources (to identify people within tracts):
Voting records, USPS address files
Motor vehicle files
Reverse phone directories
Vital statistics
Wage files
Credit card data,
Medicaid/welfare/food stamps data
Data from sensors – air quality, noise, smartphones, time, exposures, distance
Aggregate census data for tracts
Survey data, ethnographic data, experiments
Social media data (location-specific)
Census/ACS for validation
13. How would the observatory system
facilitate access to all its data?
We will examine different models of data
sharing and confidentiality - from
restricted access (Census RDCs) to remote
access and contracts.
We will be holding a workshop to address
the issues of confidentiality in data sharing
and linking.
14. Examples of centers and
applications
Chicago, Il
National Neighborhood Indicators Project
Portland, Oregon
Household Environmental Impacts and
Exposure
15. Integrated Database of Child and
Family Programs in Illinois
Robert Goerge, Urban Center for
Computation and data,
Chapin Hall, University of Chicago
16. Overall Objective
To reduce the burden of multi-problem
families who contribute the most (86%) to
cost of social services in the city:
Unemployed parents
Low socioeconomic status
Welfare program participants
Single-parent families
Mothers who had their first child as an adolescent
17. Chapin Hall Integrated Data Base
1990-present
Schools - PreK, Head Start, Public schools
UI wage and benefit records
SSA, TANF, SNAP, Child care subsidies
Foster care, child maltreatment
Medicaid providers, claims, population
CPD arrests, juvenile court, incarceration
18. Method: Improved Targeting
Through an extensive mapping process, the
city knows exactly where the bulk of
problematic families live.
They are concentrated in a few census
tracts in the city
Can focus on those areas for programs.
20. NNIP
Collaborative effort since 1995
1. Urban Institute & local partners; now 37 cities
2. All partners build and operate neighborhood
level information systems; administrative data
from multiple sources
Purpose
1. Strengthening neighborhoods
2. Promoting collaboration
3. Improving local decision-making
21. National Neighborhood Indicators PartnersAtlanta
Austin
Baltimore
Boston
Camden
Chattanooga
Chicago
Cleveland
Columbus
Dallas
Denver
Des Moines
Detroit
Grand Rapids
Hartford
Indianapolis
Kansas City
Louisville
Memphis
Miami
Milwaukee
Minneapolis-St. Paul
Nashville
New Haven
New Orleans
New York City
Oakland
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Portland
Providence
Sacramento
Saint Louis
San Antonio
Seattle
Washington, DC
24. Coalition for a Livable Future:
Greater Portland Pulse Project
Institute of Metropolitan studies
University of Portland
Meg Merrick, PhD
25. Background & Objectives
• University-community partnership
• Created a relational database infrastructure
housed at Portland state – Regional Equity
Atlas
– 111 variables and 64 indicators in ‘real time’
• For bi-state regional planning
• Interactive web tool and download capacity
• Expansion for state-level efforts
32. What are the Barriers?
Differences in data collection from place to
place, state to state
Data alignment between projects, linking
database architectures, web services,
people
Human capital in government to do this
Legal problems in sharing data
34. Benefits of this Approach
But – many of the problems have been
locally worked out.
All three examples successfully engaged
their communities and met community
needs.
Along with a national coordinating center
this model could be a valuable contribution
to the national data infrastructure.
35. What do we gain from this
platform?
A national framework for studying local
contexts for social dynamics
A national SBE cyberinfrastructure to serve
21st century society
A national framework for interdisciplinary
collaboration
36. Thank you
Sandra Hofferth
hofferth@umd.edu
http://socialobservatories.org