19 Apr Demographic Analysis: How to Understand Who Makes Up Your Community
Understanding your community is the first step to effective public engagement. There are many things to keep in mind when conducting outreach in a community, including the community’s history, age, social and economic makeup, and more. It is also critical to know who makes up your community. Understanding breakdowns of age, sex, race, English proficiency, income, and more will allow you to tailor outreach approaches and methods to the community. To gain this insight, we recommend conducting a demographic analysis of the community at the start of a project.
A demographic analysis involves gathering data on a community’s makeup. This data can provide an understanding of a community’s race, age, sex, income, language, and disability demographics. Demographic analyses can help you:
- Gain insight on the community you are engaging
- Determine the groups that are more likely to be impacted by a project’s decisions
- Conduct targeted outreach to groups that may not be reached through traditional engagement
- Recognize who is missing after outreach activities and readjust approaches to include them in future outreach
It’s important to conduct a demographic analysis for your project, but where do you begin? Here are some tips for understanding the demographics of your community!
Find trusted sources to gather data.
This data will help you make decisions in the engagement planning process and tailor your engagement approach, so it is important that the data you collect is accurate and from a reliable source. A common resource to collect demographic data is through the Census data and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. These resources can not only give you the data you need but also help you track changes over time to better understand the history of a community.
Organize your data.
After gathering data, it is important to store it in a way that is understandable and accessible. Whether you choose spreadsheet files or other types of reports, ensure that you store this in a location that you can come back to easily if needed.
Compare community data with citywide and countywide data.
Not only is the data for your individual project study area important, but it is also important to understand the broader community context at hand. How does your community compare to the city or town it’s in? Or the county? If your project focuses on a smaller area, we recommend comparing it to the city or town to understand the context of your project area’s demographics. If it is a city or town-wide project, we recommend comparing data to the county.
This comparison will highlight significant gaps and build your understanding of the area. Are there more low-income households in your community than at the countywide level? Are there more people with limited English proficiency? These considerations are not only necessary to determine federal thresholds for Environmental Justice, Title VI, and Limited English Proficiency designations, but they will also factor into your understanding of the community and the approaches you use when conducting engagement.
Use the data to tailor your engagement approach.
Once you have the data for your community and the surrounding areas, put it to use! Analyze the data and make considerations in your engagement planning for those that may be harder-to-reach, such as those with limited English proficiency or disabilities. You can then adjust your approaches to ensure that these populations are reached, such as by using translated materials in your outreach or choosing accessible venues for public meetings.
Not only will the data help you understand those that need special considerations and efforts in engagement, but it will also help you understand who may be disproportionately impacted by a project. Take a look at the areas most likely to be impacted by decisions – who makes up those specific neighborhoods? This can help you tailor your approach further, as you want to ensure that those that are impacted by a project’s decisions are informed and have the opportunity to get and stay involved.
Do not rely solely on initially collected data.
U.S. Census data is an excellent resource for demographic analyses, but it may not incorporate all data for a community. Use site visits, community partner interviews, and other methods to gain a firsthand account of the community you are working with. Some in a community may not be counted in the Census data, such as undocumented immigrants. One must gain further insight about a community to ensure that those who were not counted in the Census, or other data resources, are still counted in your engagement approach.
Conduct equity analyses to see if your approach is working.
You did it – you completed a demographic analysis, you tailored your engagement based on the data you collected, and you conducted your outreach activities for a phase in your project. How do you know that your approach was effective? Conduct an equity analysis!
Collect demographics in each engagement phase and compare those demographics to your initial community data. This will help show you who participated during an engagement phase – and who was missing. This will also allow you to adapt your approach to engage a more diverse representation of the population in future engagement!
Demographic analyses are the first step towards creating an engagement plan that works to incorporate all in a community. An understanding of who makes up the community you are engaging will make your approach more equitable, inclusive, and accessible, and this will help ensure that decisions are truly representative of the community.
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About the Author: Katie Maynard started her journey with Public Participation Partners as a Community Engagement Assistant in January 2020. When not assisting with public involvement, Katie enjoys reading, traveling to the beach, and spending time with her pets.
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