Speaker: Narayani Lasala Blanco
TOPIC: "Where There is a Will...There Isn't Always a Way: political engagement in African-American, Latino and Asian neighborhoods in seven American cities."
Research:
What explains variation in electoral participation and political engagement across different minority groups in the US?
Is the data collected through national phone surveys good enough to help us understand differences in electoral participation and political engagement amongst African American, Latino and Asian American Political behavior?
The presentation will address these questions presenting data collected between August of 2010 and February of 2012 through an in person and mail in survey in seven American cities New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Phoenix and Houston with oversamples from African American, Latinos and Asian neighborhoods in each city. (the data was collected through the IRAAS-American Cities Survey, American Cities Survey and City Neighborhoods Study).
The presentation will include an overview of the preliminary results regarding variation with electoral participation and political engagement across different minority groups in these cities; an analysis of the survey methodology employed and research design that allowed us to capture within group variation that is not captured by national level data and will conclude with a short presentation of the students that have worked on the project as interviewers in the African American neighborhoods of Chicago, New York, Houston, Los Angeles and Phoenix.
The first part of the presentation focuses on the key explanatory factors for understanding across and within group variation in political opinions and behavior is the micro political context --the city but also the neighborhood. Specifically, the study looks at the following features in local political and social context: the American institutions that socialize immigrants and minorities such as political parties, churches, non governmental organizations and number of political activists within each community, group stereotypes at the city and neighborhood level.
The second part of the presentation will explore the question of traditional survey methodology and how this affects the quality of the data when trying to study minorities in the US. Even though there are many national phone surveys with over samples of Latinos and African Americans, they are ill-equipped to answer key questions such as how it is that they acquire civic skills and which institutions provide the political socialization needed to become interested and engaged in politics because there is variation at the local level. Data collected through these surveys shows there is within group variation in the civic skills, preferences and behavior contingent in the local context which national surveys with a traditional sampling design does not pick up. Students that worked on the different cities will also contribute to this discussion and will show some images of the neighborhoods where the research was conducted.
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