Social Indicators for Rural Alaska Communities (SIRAC)

拟议的项目旨在确定自2000年以来生活在北极小社区的阿拉斯加原住民的社会条件如何变化，以及社区和小区域之间的差异。人口普查长期调查历史上提供了大量的数据来衡量社会和经济条件在美国其取代美国社区调查（ACS）后，2000年人口普查提出了严重的关注人口普查数据是否继续提供准确的措施，在阿拉斯加农村社区的福祉，在这个时候，该地区面临着前所未有的环境和社会经济变化。该项目通过开发一套新的社会、经济和文化指标来解决ACS数据的不确定性问题，这些指标具有更强的能力来检测地方尺度上的差异，具体目标包括：（1）通过将公布的误差幅度分解为表示社区、年份和个人之间的离散度的组成部分，系统地检查ACS数据在阿拉斯加农村的可靠性;（2）为阿拉斯加农村社区和地区构建社会经济指标，其误差幅度比公布的结果小得多;（3）估计观测稀疏或完全缺失的社区的关键指标;以及（4）测试社区和地区是否在一个或多个指标方面发生了重大变化或差异。该项目通过对多个主要数据源进行建模和统计分析来实现这些目标，这些数据源包括来自ACS的个人访谈数据以及与美国人口普查局合作进行的先前人口普查。项目产出包括一套社会经济指标，其可靠性高于ACS公布的数字，可以帮助州和地方政府以及非政府组织分配资金，规划和评估社会服务和经济发展方案。数据同化与社会系统模型的开创性应用，揭示了最高优先级的目标，为观察和了解北极社区的社会变化，新的数据收集援助北极社会观测系统的设计。

The proposed project aims to determine how social conditions for Alaska Natives living in small arctic communities have changed since 2000, and differ among communities and small regions. The Census Long Form Survey historically provided much of the data for measuring social and economic conditions in the U.S. Its replacement with the American Community Survey (ACS) after the 2000 Census has raised serious concerns about whether Census data continue to provide accurate measures of well-being in rural Alaska communities, at a time when the region faces unprecedented environmental and socio-economic change. The project addresses the uncertainty with ACS data by developing a new set of social, economic, and cultural indicators with increased capability to detect differences at local scales.Specific objectives include: (1) systematically examine the reliability of ACS data for rural Alaska by disaggregating published margins of error into components expressing dispersion across communities, years, and individuals; (2) construct socio-economic indicators for rural Alaska communities and regions with substantially smaller margins of error than published results; (3) estimate key indicators for communities where observations are sparse or missing entirely; and (4) test whether communities and regions have changed or differ significantly with respect to one or more indicators. The project pursues these objectives through modeling and statistical analyses of multiple primary data sources, including individual interview data from the ACS and the previous censuses in cooperation with the U.S. Census Bureau. Project outputs include a set of socio-economic indicators with improved reliability over published ACS figures that can help state and local governments and non-governmental organizations allocate funds, plan, and evaluate social service and economic development programs. A pioneering application of data assimilation with a social system model aids arctic social observing system design by revealing highest priority targets for new data collection for observing and understanding social change in arctic communities.