Neighborhood Survey Project, Texas, 2014

Modeled on the Community Survey of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, the project collected survey data from random samples of individuals from a random sample of "neighborhood clusters" in El Paso County, Texas. Neighborhood clusters consist of geographically contiguous and socially similar census tracts and for El Paso were determined by a combination of the local knowledge possessed by the project's researchers, preliminary analyses of the most recent census data regarding the distributions of immigrant status, language use, year of entry, and aspects of economic disadvantage as well as obvious boundaries (such as Interstates, major roads, mountains, and military installations). The project used a sampling frame of neighborhood clusters in El Paso County stratified by measures of immigrant concentration (e.g., generational status, length of time since immigration) and socio-economic status. The project then employed Cole Lists, a company that provides consumer information for direct marketers, to obtain a list of all residential addresses in El Paso County by census tract. From each sampled neighborhood cluster, 30 residences were selected using a systematic random sampling procedure (a random start determined from a table of random numbers and then selecting every kth address. Each selected residence was mailed a notification letter, printed in English and in Spanish, regarding participation in the project and which specified that a trained interviewer will personally visit to determine which adult resident(s), if any, are willing to participate. For residences that agreed to participate, the adult resident who had the most recent birthday was selected for actual participation. These respondents received an incentive of $20. In face-to-face interviews, trained interviewers recorded each respondent's answers on a paper form and later manually entered this information into a computer file using spreadsheet software.