Kinder Houston Area Survey, 2009-2018: Successive Representative Samples of Houston Residents

The Kinder Houston Area Survey is a longitudinal study that began in May 1982 after Houston, Texas, recovered from the recession of the mid-1980s. The overall purpose of this research was to measure systematically the public responses to the new economic, educational, and environmental challenges, and to make the findings of this continuing project readily available to civic and business leaders, to the general public, and to research scholars.

This restricted-use dataset contains all the responses from the successive representative samples of Houston residents from 2009 through 2018. These are the data that enabled the project to analyze continuity and change among area residents over the past 9 years. Altogether, the survey reached a total of 6,387 Anglos, 3,704 African Americans, 4,384 Hispanics, 1,101 Asians, and 275 others.

Conducted during February and March of each year, the interviews measured perspectives on the local and national economy, on poverty programs, inter-ethnic relationships. Also captured were respondents' beliefs about discrimination and affirmative action, education, crime, health care, taxation, and community service, as well as their assessments of downtown development, mobility and transit, land-use controls and environmental concerns, and their attitudes toward abortion, homosexuality, and other aspects of the social agenda. Also recorded were religious and political orientations, as well as an array of demographic and immigration characteristics, socioeconomic indicators, and family structures.

In addition, the data record the geographic information of each respondent, which enables researchers to connect the respondents' perceptions and experiences with information on the neighborhoods in which they live, thereby adding a contextual dimension to analyses of the factors that account for individual differences in attitudes and beliefs.