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Pages 1-14

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From page 1...
... Recognizing the value of understanding these relationships, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) requested that the Committee on National Statistics create a panel "to identify measurement approaches that can lead to improved understanding of civic engagement, social cohesion, and social capital -- and their potential role in explaining the functioning of society." The statement of task called for the panel to consider conceptual frameworks, definitions of key terms, the feasibility and specifications of relevant indicators, and the relationship between these indicators and selected social trends.
From page 2...
... • What should be the role of the federal statistical system, recogniz ing a rapidly changing data collection environment? • How might disparate data sources -- including administrative data and unstructured digital data (that is, the vast range of infor mation produced on an ongoing basis, and usually for purposes other than statistics and research)
From page 3...
... 6) emphasizes the capacity of personal and group connections and other support resources to affect "the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of their membership in social networks or other social structures." Civic engagement and social cohesion are often viewed as components of the charge's third key term -- social capital.
From page 4...
... PRIORITIZING MEASURES, DATA COLLECTION STRATEGIES Studies of social capital have covered a broad range of topics in the social, health, and economic policy domains, including: • personal connectedness and employment outcomes; • effects of social cohesion, self-reported "trust," and other dimen sions of neighborhood social capital on crime and public safety; • cohesion and community resiliency; • home ownership and civic engagement; • social connections and self-reported well-being; • isolation and health effects; • social capital and mental illness; • social relationships and health mechanisms; and • social capital and child outcomes. Depending on the question of interest, a given dimension of social capital may be seen as a mechanism whereby change can be affected (i.e., through policy levers)
From page 5...
... improvement in the near-term data collection, focusing primarily on existing survey vehicles, or (2) longer term visions that anticipate the potential of combining government surveys with one another, with administrative data, and with unstructured digital data generated as the by-product of day-to-day business, communication, social, and other activities.
From page 6...
... THE CPS SUPPLEMENTS That the government collects data about civic engagement signals that these topics are important to the nation. The purpose of the CPS Civic Engagement Supplement -- fielded in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and, with a half sample, 2013 -- as stated in justification documentation prepared by CNCS for the U.S.
From page 7...
... The CPS Supplements are less useful for generating data on dimensions of social capital such as social cohesion, connectedness, and trust. CONCLUSION 7: Although even a short module can generate useful information, the Current Population Survey does not offer a comparative advantage for data collection on complex behaviors and attitudes indicative of social cohesion, individ ual and group connectedness, and civic health generally.
From page 8...
... iden tifying and eliminating questions for which comparable data can be found in other government surveys or elsewhere, while recognizing there is analytic value in having both volunteering and civic engagement data, along with covariate information, for the same respondents. BEYOND THE CPS Developing a comprehensive data collection strategy requires consideration of other survey vehicles; the CPS supplements should not be evaluated in isolation.
From page 9...
... Civic Engagement Supplement and the Neighborhood Social Capital Module of the American Housing Survey. Other candidates are the CPS Volunteer Supplement and the American Time Use Survey and the CPS Voting and Registration Supplement and other national election administration and voting surveys.
From page 10...
... Second, and especially relevant to assessment of the CPS Civic Engagement Supplement, is that sample sizes associated with national-level population surveys are not typically adequate to support local-area analyses. Modelling methods can often take advantage of survey data augmented with additional records for the purpose of producing small area estimates that are essential to measuring neighborhood and community phenomena.
From page 11...
... . The emergence of big data, coupled with advances in computational science analytic techniques, raises the possibility of developing indicators of citizens' civic engagement and other social behaviors and attitudes that are less burdensome than surveys.
From page 12...
... But the nature of the activities, attitudes, and behaviors encompassed, along with the multiple geographic levels of interest and the role of group and individual interactions, make it an illuminating case study of the growing need for multimode data collection to underpin modern research and policy. And, because the study of social capital is a relatively new strand of social science inquiry, where methods are not as entrenched as elsewhere, it is a good testing ground for development of experimental measurement approaches that exploit the rapidly evolving data landscape.
From page 13...
... SUMMARY 13 conceived notions of what the underlying statistical framework (and official statistics in the area) should look like, measurement of social cohesion, civic engagement, and other dimensions of social capital is a good place for statistical agencies to begin developing cutting-edge techniques for blending traditional survey data with new, nonsurvey data into integrated measurement programs.


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