DOI: 10.3886/icpsr35578
title: Community Indicators Survey [1999-2002]
title: Archival Version

description: The Community Indicators project is a research-based initiative that is part of the Knight Foundation's ongoing effort to learn more about the 26 communities it serves through its grant-making. To document changes in the quality of life in its communities, the foundation tracks a few key indicators over time. The project focuses on aspects of community life related to the six grant-making areas that are the priority of the Knight Community Partners Program. The Knight Community Partners Program prefers to make grants in the following six priority areas: education; the well-being of children and families; housing and community development; economic development; civic engagement and positive human relations; and the vitality of cultural life. The foundation expected to update both the community surveys and the community profiles approximately every three years.


Local area surveys were conducted in each of the 26 communities in both 1999 and 2002. In 2002, a number of the local area surveys were supplemented with regional surveys or surveys of a neighboring city. The 26 local areas surveyed in 1999 were: Milledgeville, GA; Long Beach, CA; Gary, IN; Boca Raton (Palm Beach County), FL; Boulder, CO; Philadelphia, PA; Akron, OH; Macon, GA; Columbus, GA; Aberdeen, SD; Grand Forks, ND; Wichita, KS; Charlotte, NC; Columbia, SC; Myrtle Beach, SC; Tallahassee, FL; Duluth, MN; St. Paul, MN; State College, PA; Fort Wayne, IN; Biloxi, MS; Detroit, MI; Lexington, KY; San Jose, CA; Bradenton, FL; Miami, FL. For 2002, the 11 regional and neighboring city areas also surveyed were: Charlotte, NC - Regional; Columbus, SC - Second City; Detroit, MI - Regional; Duluth, MN - Second City; Gary, IN - Regional; Grand Forks, SD - Second City; Lexington, KY - Regional; Philadelphia, PA - Regional; Philadelphia, PA - Second City, and Miami - Dade, FL and Miami - Broward, FL in place of Miami, FL. National surveys were also conducted in order to provide comparative benchmark measures. The surveys measured citizens' civic engagement and attitudes concerning seven topic areas: education, arts and culture, children and social welfare, community development, homelessness, literacy, and citizenship. Questions relating specifically to arts and culture include frequency of attendance at arts events or museums and satisfaction with arts and cultural opportunities.


The study was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates and funded by the Knight Foundation. In 1999, 17,417 telephone interviews were conducted from February 10 through December 1. In 2002, 21,722 telephone interviews were conducted from January 2 through October 3.
description: The Community Indicators Project was undertaken to document the social health of the 26 communities in which the Knight brothers published newspapers.
description: Princeton Survey Research Associates conducted telephone interviews with representative samples of adults 18 years of age or older, living in telephone households in the area of each individual survey's geographic coverage. The interview protocol for each local area survey was nearly identical to the protocol for the national survey also conducted for this project. The 26 local areas surveyed in 1999 were: Milledgeville, GA; Long Beach, CA; Gary, IN; Boca Raton (Palm Beach County), FL; Boulder, CO; Philadelphia, PA; Akron, OH; Macon, GA; Columbus, GA; Aberdeen, SD; Grand Forks, ND; Wichita, KS; Charlotte, NC; Columbia, SC; Myrtle Beach, SC; Tallahassee, FL; Duluth, MN; St. Paul, MN; State College, PA; Fort Wayne, IN; Biloxi, MS; Detroit, MI; Lexington, KY; San Jose, CA; Bradenton, FL; Miami, FL. For 2002, the 11 regional and neighboring city areas also surveyed were: Charlotte, NC - Regional; Columbus, SC - Second City; Detroit, MI - Regional; Duluth, MN - Second City; Gary, IN - Regional; Grand Forks, SD - Second City; Lexington, KY - Regional; Philadelphia, PA - Regional; Philadelphia, PA - Second City, and Miami - Dade, FL and Miami - Broward, FL in place of Miami, FL. In 1999, 17,417 telephone interviews were conducted from February 10 through December 1. In 2002, 21,722 telephone interviews were conducted from January 2 through October 3. The results of each survey were weighted, when possible, to make the sample more representative of the population with respect to gender, age, race, and education.


The samples were based on random digit dialing. At least 10 attempts were made to complete an interview at every sampled telephone number. The calls were staggered over times of day and days of week to maximize the chances of making a contact with a potential respondent. All interview breakoffs and refusals were re-contacted at least once in order to attempt to convert them to completed interviews.
description: The surveys measured civic engagement and attitudes concerning seven topic areas: education, arts and culture, children and social welfare, community development, homelessness, literacy, and citizenship. Questions relating specifically to arts and culture include frequency of attendance at arts events or museums, satisfaction with arts and cultural opportunities, and satisfaction with the performance of local cultural institutions.
description: Claritas Data Services provided the demographic weighting parameters for each individual study. The population parameters are the demographic characteristics of households with adults 18 or older, which are then compared with the sample characteristics to construct sample weights. The results have been weighted to adjust for variations in the sample relating to sex, age, race, and education. Weighting was accomplished using Sample Balancing, a special iterative sample weighting program that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables using a statistical technique called the Deming Algorithm. Finally, weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results. The use of these weights in statistical analysis ensures that the demographic characteristics of the sample closely approximate the demographic characteristics of the population of interest. The Community Indicators Survey 1999: Cumulative data file contains 2 weight variables: ODWGHT (Weight sums to unweighted number of cases) and WEIGHT (Weight sums to weighted number of cases). The Community Indicators Survey 2002: Cumulative data file contains 1 weight variable: WEIGHT (Weight sums to unweighted number of cases).
description: Response Rates: Response rates are not available for the cumulative data files. For response rates for the national and local surveys, please refer to the "Descriptions of National and Local Surveys, 1999 and 2002" Data Documentation file.
description: This survey used a random samples constructed by random digit dialing (RDD). In each contacted household, interviewers asked to speak with the "youngest male, 18 years of age or older, who is at home." If there was no eligible man at home, interviewers asked to speak with the "oldest woman, 18 years of age or older, who is now at home." This systematic respondent selection technique has been shown empirically to produce samples that closely mirror the population in terms of age and gender.


The error attributable to sampling in each individual survey ranged from plus or minus four percentage points to plus or minus six percentage points. Results based on smaller subgroups are subject to a larger margin of sampling error. In addition to sampling error, the practical difficulties of conducting telephone surveys can introduce error or bias into their results.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Community Indicators Survey 1999: Cumulative
DS2: Community Indicators Survey 2002: Cumulative
description: Adults 18 years of age or older living in households with telephones. Smallest Geographic Unit: city
description: telephone interviewThe study was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International in Princeton, New Jersey. Funding for the study was provided by the Knight Foundation.This data collection was previously distributed by the Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive (CPANDA). CPANDA distributed the cumulative files, the national samples, and local surveys for 1999 and 2002 as individual datasets. NADAC is distributing only the 1999 and 2002 cumulative files as they contain in one dataset for each year all the data from the national samples and the local, regional, and neighboring city surveys. Users can create national or local survey subsets from the cumulative file if they want to analyze the national or local surveys individually. The CPANDA Identification Number (study number) for the entire data collection is c00007. The CPANDA Identification number for the Community Indicators Survey 1999: Cumulative is a00198 and for the Community Indicators Survey 2002: Cumulative is a00199. CPANDA conducted the following processing steps for release of this collection: produced a codebook, checked for undocumented codes, performed consistency checks, provided frequencies, and reformatted the data.