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发生了怎样的变化，并在社区和小地区之间存在差异。人口普查长期调查历来为衡量美国的社会和经济状况提供了大量数据。在2000年人口普查后，人口普查数据取代了美国社区调查(ACS)，引发了人们的严重担忧，即在阿拉斯加农村社区面临前所未有的环境和社会经济变化之际，人口普查数据是否继续提供准确的幸福感衡量标准。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，这些指标具有更强的检测地方规模差异的能力。具体目标包括：(1)通过将公布的误差率分解为表示跨社区、年份和个人的分散度的组成部分，系统地检查阿拉斯加农村地区的ACS数据的可靠性；(2)构建阿拉斯加农村社区和地区的社会经济指标，其误差幅度比公布的结果小得多；(3)估计观察稀少或完全缺失的社区的关键指标；以及(4)测试社区和地区在一个或多个指标方面是否发生了变化或显著不同。该项目通过对多个主要数据来源的建模和统计分析来实现这些目标，这些数据来源包括美国人口普查委员会的个人访谈数据和与美国人口普查局合作的以前的人口普查数据。项目产出包括一套社会经济指标，其可靠性比已公布的ACS数据更高，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计划。数据同化与社会系统模型的开创性应用揭示了观察和理解北极社区社会变化的新数据收集的最优先目标，从而有助于北极社会观察系统的设计。

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.