Using KIDS COUNT Data to Examine Child Well-Being in Your State

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Using KIDS COUNT Data to Examine Child
Well-Being in Your State

• Polly Fassinger
• Research Analyst
• North Dakota KIDS COUNT
• and Professor of Sociology
• Concordia College Moorhead, MN

Presentation for the Midwest Sociological Society
meeting, April 2007
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Outline of presentation

• What is KIDS COUNT?
• Types of data sets available
• Types of analysis possible
• Examples of class projects

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What is Kids Count?

• National organization
• Annie E. Casey Foundation
• Offices in each state
• Goal Promote well-being of children through
  supplying data
• Decision-makers and public audiences
• Home page www.aecf.org
• New images

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Data sets available

• Census Data Online
• 1990 and 2000
• Community-Level Data Online - CLIKS
• Differs by each state
• State-Level Data Online
• Updated annually

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Census Data Online

• Income and poverty
• Parental employment
• Education
• Language
• Disability
• Neighborhood characteristics
• Age and Sex
• Race
• Hispanic Origin Status
• Living arrangements

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Census data geographic areas

• Eleven geographical area levels including
• The United States
• States
• Cities
• Counties
• American Indian/Alaska Native/Hawaiian Home Lands

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CLICKS Community Level Data

• Data sets submitted by state Kids Count
  organizations
• Includes data from state agencies
• E.g., domestic violence, abuse, juvenile justice
• Updated annually
• Topical areas and variables are not uniform
  across states
• Longitudinal data
• County-level data

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State-Level Data Online

• 107 indicators of child well-being
• Education
• Employment and income
• Health
• Health insurance
• Immigrant children
• Population and family characteristics
• Poverty
• Youth risk factors

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Descriptive Analyses with These Three Data Sets

• Basic profiles of geographic areas (states,
  counties)

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Additional Types of Descriptive Analyses

• Line graphs of trends over time

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Additional Descriptive Analyses

• Rankings of geographic areas

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Final Type of Descriptive Analyses

• Maps of geographic areas

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Goals for assignments with Kids Count data

• Reinforce importance of macro-level analyses
• Skill development
• Table-reading
• Developing or testing hypotheses
• Problem-solving
• Evaluating evidence

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Assignment Examples

• Introduction to Sociology
• Social Problems
• Sociology of Families

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Descriptive assignments

• Which children are at greatest risk for being
  poor in our state?
• Consider the following variables
• Age
• Household structure
• Immigrant status
• County of residence

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First data set to explore

• State-Level Data Online

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Second data set

• Census Data Online

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Third data set

• CLIKS Community-Level Data Online

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Other descriptive assignments
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Where do children have the best quality of life?

• Midwest or U.S. state comparisons
• Quality of life
• Health
• Education
• Youth risk

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Race/ethnic group and well-being

• Which racial/ethnic group in our state is most
  likely to
• be living in a single-parent household
• be poor
• have no parent in the labor force
• living in institutionalized group quarters

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Hypothesis development or testing assignments

• Which states (or regions) in the U.S. have the
  highest levels of poverty?
• Of the following variables, which are most
  strongly related to high levels of poverty in a
  state?
• Rates of youth not employed or in school
• Teen pregnancy rates
• High school drop out rates

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Problem-solving assignments

• After (or at end) of descriptive assignment on
  poverty
• Assume that the governor of our state wants to
  promote child well-being by providing each county
  with 10,000 to help them fund preschool programs
  for poor children.
• Evaluate this plan.
• Propose another way to distribute funds that
  would more appropriately reflect poverty in this
  state.

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Problem-solving assignments

• You direct this states Youth Crisis Centers.
• What should be your organizations main priority
  for the next year?
• Support your decision with available data on
  at-risk behaviors of youth.

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Problem-solving assignments

• Your organization can grant three states money to
  work on alcohol abuse education programs.
• Which of the following states would you select
  for this grant, assuming that their applications
  were equivalent in quality?
• North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa,
  Wisconsin, Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri

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Evaluating evidence within assignments

• How are variables operationalized?
• Information on how each variable is measured
• How recent are these data?
• What is the source of this data?
• What other information (about an indicator) would
  be helpful to know?

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Other uses of KIDS COUNT

• Locating other data sources
• North Dakota Kids Count site
• Youth Risk Behavior Survey
• National Center on Education Statistics
• National Survey of Childrens Health
• Illustrating occupational applied sociology

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Another resource for class projects

• Kids Count in the Classroom
• Moves beyond descriptive statistics
• Requires downloading of data
• http//www.ssdan.net/kidscount/index.shtml

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• Presenter contact information
• Dr. Polly A. Fassinger
• Research Analyst
• North Dakota KIDS COUNT
• fassinge_at_cord.edu

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North Dakota KIDS COUNT NDSU P.O. Box
5636 Fargo, ND 58105 Phone [phone]
www.ndkidscount.org